How Wrestling Prepares You For Life
The average High School Wrestling Season last 3 months. With a Dual meet every weekend, and pre or post season tournaments, the average wrestler could possibly rack up over a hundred matches by the time they're done with High School. If you've wrestled from a younger age, competed in pre and post season tournaments, continued on to Collegiate Wrestling, or competed in out of school Freestyle or Greco tournaments, you could easily rack up a thousand matches by the time you've reached the end of your wrestling career.
Wrestling is one of the few Combat Sports where you can rack up such a large amount of competition experience. Due to the nature of any combat sport that involves strikes, competing that frequently would be devastating to your body. But, like other combat sports, wrestling competitions are in a league of their own as far as how they develop people. They're completely different from any other sort of competition.
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Wrestling requires a team. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Without good training partners you absolutely cannot be successful in this sport. You have to be running drills to learn the techniques. Without a body to drill with, you'll never learn how to execute the skills properly. You have to be Wrestling at 100% in practice. Just learning how to shoot a double isn't the same as learning how to shoot a double on someone who doesn't want to be taken down.
This need for a team, forces wrestlers into developing important teamwork skills. These are skills that will affect every aspect of their lives. Learning how to follow teammates, to be a good student. Learning how to support teammates, to be a good team player. Learning how to teach others, to be a good Leader. These are all skills that are developed in the wrestling room every day.
But during competition the entire dynamic changes. You're on the mat all by yourself. There's no one to pick up the slack if you're having an off day. There's no one to back you up when you've made a mistake. There's also no one that you'll have to back up or pick the slack for. The results of a wrestling match are purely based on the performance of you and your opponent. No one else.
If you fail to perform better than your opponent, you lose. It's that simple. This leaves you with a very definitive list when it comes to accountability. It’s just you. You didn't sprawl soon enough. You didn't set up that shot. You didn't defend that half. No one else is to blame.
This level of self accountability is key to improvement. Improvement in every aspect of your life. It lets you know exactly what you need to work on. There's no blaming someone else. There's no "well I did my job" type of mentality. There's just the knowledge that if you don't improve, you will continue to be unsuccessful.
This combination of needing a team to be prepared, but being solely responsible for your performance when it comes time to compete, is what sets all combat sports apart from everything else. It's what changes people to perform at their best in all aspects of life.
Fundamentals are crucial to success regardless of what level you are at. Chael Sonnen was one of the best wrestler's to enter into MMA, and he used his foundational wrestling to get there! WRESTLING FUNDAMENTALS FROM THE BAD GUY BY CHAEL SONNEN HAS WHAT YOU NEED!