The Sapling Amongst the Oaks

I have been fortunate enough to become a part of the group of coaches that steers the Keystone Wrestling Camp, created and maintained by former Penn State Head Coach and NCAA Champion John Fritz. Most recently, six of us met to discuss the camp in the coming year. Ways we will change the camp to offer a truly systematic approach to teaching wrestling. I could go on and on about the positive aspect of teaching system wrestling, but I’ll spare you the details. Instead, I’d like to comment on a phenomena I realized while driving to the meeting. I was the only person that would sit at the table that was not either an All-America wrestler, or coach of a PIAA State place winner. Sure, I’d been fortunate enough to coach some really great wrestlers, but I lacked either of these accolades.

On the way to the meeting, I’d become further taken by this idea. I have good pedigree as stated in an earlier post. I have had some great experiences coaching wrestlers and training athletes. But I was a young kid seated at a table full of legends. To my far left sat NCAA champion and coach of many NCAA All-America wrestlers, John Fritz. Next to Coach Fritz sat Ralph Voit, Head Coach of a very successful Gov. Mifflin wrestling program. Along the other side of the table sat NCAA Champion Stan Zeamer, NCAA All-America Bernie Fritz, and NCAA All-America and Coach of 2x NCAA Champions Duane Bastress, Tom Kessler from York College of PA.

This group is the most unassuming group one could ever happen upon. As Coach Kessler and I left, I saw three men wearing Penn State shirts and I wondered if they even knew they were in the presence of two former All-America wrestlers. To get back to the point of this all, it took me well into the meeting to believe I was fortunate enough to sit at the table with these men. These men are giants in this field we call wrestling.

It was then that I was called back to the adage from Confucius telling me I really do not know that much. I have a lot left to learn in this life and only be understanding that I am a sapling when surrounded by mature oaks will I truly be able to learn. So often many of us, me included, think we have “IT” together, when in fact we don’t have a clue. I have been at the top and the bottom of the coaching barrel. I was lucky enough to be voted as a coach of the year by my peers in 2007,and just five years before I coached a group of wrestlers that couldn’t get out of their own way.

When we face situations like this, all we can do is sit back, shut up, and listen to what these men have to say. I had another situation like this over the summer when I got the chance to speak with Kevin McCleary. He’s a local legend here in York County, and for good reason. He’s been an NCAA All-America wrestler, he has coached some of the best ever to wrestle here in York County, and he’s been a coach for the PAWF in Freestyle and Greco. His fund of knowledge is enormous, and he has the personality to go with it. Kevin taught me more in a few short moments than I have learned in entire semesters in classrooms with people holding Ph.D.’s.

I guess my point in all of this is, when you are the sapling, be as much. Do not try to be too much more than what you are, for if you do, those around,  you will know and you will forever be a sapling while questing to be an oak.

Upward,

Fortes Fortuna Iuvat

Focus is necessary: Danger Training

Danger Training:

So often as trainers (I am NOT certified, but I do coach youth thru NCAA wrestlers) we focus on things based on science. We often fail to really focus on the psychological side of the training. We talk about the psychological side of the training, but to really train the psychological side calls for us to realize failure might not only be eminent, but painful. Not painful in a boo hoo manner, but in a very real physical sense. If you have ever bonked on a box jump you know from where I am coming. I have come to call this the Oh $&1! Point of training.

Recently I had begun doing tire jumps in my basement. I don’t have boxes, and with two children cranking out $150 for a 36” box is not practical and may make my wife re-evaluate my place as her husband. After having no problem sticking the 32” stacked tires I needed to progress further. I decided jumping into the tires is a great idea. It forced me to gain height and to create distance displacement. The real training though came from getting out of the tire. I had less room to squat and use my arms. If I failed coming out of the tire I was going to wind up flat on my face on my basement floor. I don’t have any padding there, so it would be up to me and my hands to save my face. It’s not pretty, but it is passable.

With that, I took to thinking about ways to help our athletes. We have a wrestler that has become a physical specimen in his own right, a tough kid from NY (Strong Island) that is about as explosive as I have ever coached. Considering I have had the great fortune to coach an Ok. St. Cowboy and a VA Tech Hokie that are looked upon as two of the more explosive wrestlers in the country, this is saying something. Our wrestler can explode, but he had trouble knowing when explosion is needed. So I began to think how to apply the idea of danger into his training.

About 3 weeks ago, I went to my in-laws farm for dinner after a workout and swim. Part of my workout was to perform a knee jump to a jump over a portion of the barn foundation, then to do 10 kettlebell swings and 10 push ups. I started by kneeling about 6” from the barn foundation, jumping to my feet, then over the foundation (about 18”) to my bell. Each time I jumped I had to focus, because if I failed my shins were going to be hambuger.

I thought back to a clip of the training of the actors in the movie 300 where one of  the stuntmen says, “So, if you’re not nervous before you train, think about it. It might be not hard enough[sic].” When we train, a fear is needed, that we might not make it; couple that with the fear of injury and you have a different mentality when training.

I took this training to some of our wrestlers at York during the recent visit of John Fritz’s Keystone Wrestling Camp. I taught two of our guys the knee jump – box jump combination to emphasize the response of the nervous system to multiple jumping exercises. Once that was mastered we looked for more, only because our shins were spared. We took it to the field house the next day at the end of a session and created a gauntlet. Knee jump to a 24” box jump to a jump into and out of a 30” tire stack, then onto a 30” box. If we failed at any point we were falling on our face. My knees bear the bruises of my neuromuscular system failing me twice. We then created alternate versions where we would land on one foot on the boxes to find out if our muscles could stabilize. There were a few falls during the exercise, including one where I jumped over the 30” box and bit some floor.

The idea that if our muscles failed us we’d be hurt made a focus so much more clear and present. Before each knee jump a centering of our person was needed. If we capriciously went into the movement as people often do in a “gym” then we’d pay for it for who knows how long. In conversation I likened this to running across a pond full of gators. If you fail, you die. That simple.

Focus before each movement you do to prepare for anything you prepare for is a necessity. If you can perform a movement without focus, is it really worth doing?

The choice is yours.

Upward,

Fortes Fortuna Iuvat

Darkness: An Essay of a Wrestling Road Trip

Below is the beginnings of something I was brought to about four years ago just before the birth of our daughter. It was really just me trying to sort out my thoughts about wrestling, coaching, and what this entire trip has been about for me and then my family. What you are seeing is the unpublished, but it is not fair trade for anyone. I point you to Mark Twight’s piece on copywrite infringement in society today. If you like it, great I am glad I could make your day better. If you don’t like it leave a comment telling me what you don’t like. Criticism without feedback is useless to me.

For the first time ever I release a piece of my closest ideas.

DARKNESS: An Essay on the Wrestling Road trip.

Darkness, not any type of darkness, but a very specific type. The darkness that penetrates, makes you run up the stairs to your bed after you’ve shut out the last light in a room. The darkness that begs questions in your head, in your soul. Time passes, darkness does not. Staring and searching into this darkness breeds deafening silence. Windows become useless in this trek thru the darkness, the only thing they offer is a face staring back, clueless. Then at that point people are forced to look inward, inside, because trying to see anything on the outside is a waste of time and energy.
This darkness is thick, filled with the steamy breath of 24 boys, men. Hungry souls with eager dreams and strong backs. The driver plods over asphalt on this journey to Hell. It’s times like this that seconds turn into minutes, minutes turn into hours, and hours morph to days. Headlights cut a path to nowhere leading two dozen fresh faced boys, men to another stop, another time to stretch the legs and torture the body. Released from the motorcade for hours of side splitting work. There is nothing fun about this trip, there never is and never will be. Brains rattle on glass, jaws shake over potholes, bones ache in cramped quarters. Mouths lay agape, spewing stench as only a thirsty mouth can. Knees poke thru seats into the kidneys of the guy lucky enough to sit ahead. The comfort of others is not a priority in this odorous caravan. Another pothole causes a fuse to ignite in a separated shoulder. The jostle drives the starvation headache deeper into the skull. The backs of the eyes throb. Heads bounce against the seats, foreheads, backs of heads, the pain is blinding all the same. Crying might be fun right now, except there is not any water to generate the tears. This crew, these boys, men are prisoners of war held captive by something much larger than government or ideology.
The crew resembles mid-20th century death camp. Heads shaven to avoid lice, clothes hang from skeletons, infections breed and fester on the surface of the skin. Incalculable injuries leave this mass of humanity nearly crippled for life. Broken fingers are splintered limbs of trees; Aching muscles are freshly hewn timber left exposed to debilitating elements. Bruised bodies are the tell tale sign of weakness, draught, and malnourishment. Open wounds are gateways for infection, pestilence. This band of abused bodies travels slowly, silently because no one has anything to say, and more importantly, no one cares to hear it.
Just to be a dick and show he is in charge the driver hits rumble strips to jolt the crew awake. He laughs as the bus to Hell slams awake, eyes tearing open. Lightning bolts scream past the slipped discs and fused vertebra that make them 40 years old, yet barely legal to drink alcohol. In this darkness the driver is history’s worst men all in one. Vlad the Impaler, Josef Stalin, Slobodan Milosevic. His pleasure is their pain. He negotiates curves and overcompensates so bones jar and dead muscles spasm. This speckled band is headed northwest on a frigid January night. Powerless to the cause they boarded the bus under careful watch and instruction. Hassled, harassed, harangued. Forced to climb the steps, take a seat and settle in for a trip to Hell. This darkness is painful, the crew cannot place blame for this trip, they’re addicts, zealots, called to duty. They cannot renege now, or ever. They’ve chosen this path, this deafening, dangerous slope all in hopes of being cured.
Mountains swallow the bus making this darkness darker. Traversing Pennsylvania in mid winter is pure, unadulterated misery. Add crippling injury, agonizing starvation, and unquenchable thirst, shake and you have helpless souls looking for their next fix. The needle, the hit, the nostrilful. Never again to be as it once was. The first beautiful high leads this helpless group hoping, praying, and fasting to achieve the power they’ll never see or feel again. The only thing they have now and forever is darkness. Silent, deafening darkness. In their hearts, the empty chambers where they cannot feel love or pain, only deceit and hate. In their minds, where they cannot rationalize, but the make conscious effort to hurt themselves and others over and over and over again. Some will quit, others will die off, but for those determined they will spend the rest of their miserable lives trapped in a funhouse of emotion and darkness looking for the exit, the next fix, the path to enlightenment.
The driver offers no consolations, no apologies, just a shot of cold wind and a screech of hot brakes to drive the pain, make it hurt. As the Latin say, Quae Nocent Docent, “That which hurts teaches”, then again those speaking Latin are dead or living in perpetual pain and sorrow, so what do they know.
To look out the window into the night is useless, or is it morning. The warping and dulling of the senses is part of the deteriorating bodies, minds and souls of these dependents. To look out the window would offer hopes, dreams. Before one can realize a dream they must be able to look in the deepest, ugliest parts of their minds and heart. They must search the darkness. Only here can a boy, a man finds his purpose, his eight-fold path to Nirvana. The darkness staring in stimulates the process, but one must be brave enough to see what he is made of before the journey can ever truly begin. The journey; however, never, ever ends. There is never the next hit, the next fix, the next high. If only this bus would crash, then and only then would these tortured souls be set free. There is no sense in trying to sleep, why would they want to, they can do that when they are dead.

Social Capital and the effect for wrestling coaches

Social capital:.
I’d like to thank my infant son Colton for inspiring me to write this blog post. When you are the son of a coach you are always thinking on ways to improve. Ways to make the program better. It becomes an inherent imperative along with the more important things in life.

Shortly after creating a post on a social networking site, I found that I am more fortunate than I knew. I opened my account to see a list of 34 notes from friends and family congratulating my wife and I on the birth of our future state and national champion. It was then I was reminded of an article I’d read by strength and conditioning legend Dan John. In his explanation of a torture tool he calls the “Slosh Pipe” he also speaks about social capital. It’s having friends that are there for you in times of need. Well, as a wrestling coach at the NCAA level our time of need has never been greater to have a legitimate amount of social capital. As we move forward daily hoping that our programs are not the next cut we need to rely on this social capital to help drive and in some cases resuscitate our programs.

Cal State Bakersfield recently held an auction to save their program for the 2010-2011 season. The people close to the program relied heavily on their social capital to help secure over $100k in donations to support the program. Not only have the people close to the program saved the program for a season, they have forged relationships with people in and around the Road Runner community.

Creating social capital happens in two ways for coaches. The first is the natural fit where the coach is a longstanding member of the community. In situations like this, the coach can depend on longstanding relationships with those in the community to help support their program. By inviting the community into the program the coach creates an entirely new group of stakeholders that go far beyond the alumni and parents that are usually called upon to support the program. Once people become vested in a product they can believe in and stand behind they will continue to support the program year after year at event after event. When the coaching staff is native to the community it is quite easy to lasso the social capital needed to help drive the program.

The second way for coaches to build social capital happens for those that are not native to the community, let’s call them transplants. Reaching out to the community surrounding the program can be a daunting task for those not necessarily familiar with the geographic area. No matter how good a coach or their staff is they still need to get out into the community to build trusting relationships with potential donors. If they cannot find local businesses or patrons they might as well be selling cookies and cakes at bake sales to raise funds. These coaches cannot even take an alumni base for granted as replacing a longstanding coach can bring an entirely different set of issues for a new coach and his staff. This coach needs to build his social capital and credibility through the local and alumni community by taking advantage of the resources that are at his disposal.

My first piece of advice for both coaches, the native and the transplant, are to get in touch with Jim Harshaw at RIOT Sports Marketing. Jim has an excellent product and plan in place to gain maximum exposure for your program. He is on the forefront of social media to allow coaches to connect to their constituents. By taking the guesswork out of fundraising RIOT allows coaches to focus on the most important part of their programs, coaching. By using social networking sites and multimedia presentations Jim puts your program at the forefront of local, regional, and national attention. Whether it is raising funds, or raising awareness about your program RIOT will help you develop the relationships necessary to propel your program off of the endangered list. In today’s current collegiate wrestling climate what more could a coach ask for?

So, at a day old my son has come to inspire me, and I am sure if that day is any indicator that he’ll be doing the same for years to come. Check your social capital today and make sure it is working for you.

Upward,

Fortes Fortuna Iuvat