Cal High Wrestling

A few weeks ago we started to incorporate mental techniques into the Condor Wrestling Club Practices.

On monday, we did an exercise to highlight the following: 

1) All of us have Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs)

example: “The guy that I’m going to wrestle looks way stronger than me” (I’ll use this ex. thoughout this post)

2) ANTs lead to a poor state of mind

example: anxious/not confident about the match (because you think the guy is stronger and will beat you)

3) A poor state of mind leads to undesirable  behavior (poor performance)

example: Not being aggressive, not defending a takedown, not trying to escape when on bottom, not controlling your opponent when on top, etc.

Although it is normal to have ANTs, we also talked about how to manage them when they happen (because you will have them again)

Through another exercise we learned that we can talk back to these ANTs (you teenagers might be good at this in other settings :))  Some of the ways to handle ANTs were:

1) Talk back to the ANTs to counter them

example: ” I have beaten guys that looked stronger than me in the past” or “just b/c he looks strong, it does not mean that he is good wrestler” or “Even if he is stronger than me, I can use my speed and other skills” or “I am strong too”

2) Strength is not an all or nothing thing, it is on a continuum (even a baby has some strength to hold a bottle)

example: we all saw that even the  lightest guy in the room “felt” strong even when drilling against a guy 50 pounds heavier.

3) Find evidence that supports your responses (you have beaten guys in the past that looked stronger) or make sure that you believe in your statements (even if you only believe 80% of it).  Talking back w/ a positive remark that you do not believe in will not do the trick.

Practice noticing your ANTs and talking back to them (you need to do this in order to learn to use this skill during a match).

We’ll talk more about how to handle ANTs next monday

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Mental Toughness.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.