With Spencer Lee
CONTROL THE CONTROLLABLES
There are a lot of ways you can look at getting into the competition mindset. I generally recommend only focusing on the things you can directly affect. Things I tend to outline are sleep, having a routine you trust, and a good warmup. Anything that you can change, tweak, and improve. You can control what time you go to bed, how dedicated you are to your diet, and how positive you are day in and day out.
If you focus on controlling the controllables, it gives each day even more meaning and a way for you to keep yourself even more accountable. If you focus only on what you can control and don’t let anything else distract you, wrestling just becomes as natural as breathing.
BE A STUDENT OF THE SPORT
This is something I truly believe in. When I was younger, I studied the greats. I watched anything I could get my hands on about Olympic wrestling. Even to this day, people are shocked by my knowledge of all the wrestlers in Freestyle and Greco-Roman who I can name. I believe that wrestling can transcend any era, and just because moves from the past may not seem like they could work today, I never believed that. I challenge all of you to try and watch matches from the 1972 Olympic Games and all the way up to the most recent Olympic Games.
Try and find a style you like, emulate it, and incorporate their techniques in your own way in today’s era of wrestling. The more you watch, the better your wrestling IQ can be, and you can sharpen your wrestling without even wrestling. The mind is more powerful than you think.
MOVING ON WITH FAILURE
The easiest way to move on from a tournament is when you win it. The hardest way to move on is when you fail to achieve your goal. Even though this is the hardest thing to do, you must learn to keep your eyes forward and stay on the path. Do not stray, do not allow negativity to cloud your mind and ruin the years of belief and fight. To conquer the world, you must be able to focus only on what is next and not what has already happened. To remember the feeling of failure, but not dwell on it. Use that feeling as motivation to continue the fight each day.
To enjoy the process and just keep moving forward is how champions are made. Not much can feel worse than people trying to be positive about your failures, but you must be able to learn from your past and be better for it. Never give up fighting for your dreams, use all that you learned in victory, and most importantly in defeat, to help others.
