The Attitude of Greatness
Note this piece is the second in a series on the life lessons of wrestling on and off the mat.
Right now, the United States Olympic Wrestling Team is busy preparing for Rio. With the Olympic Trials behind them and the team finalized, our athletes now turn their full attention to the goal at hand: winning an Olympic gold medal. Obviously this involves intense physical training, but other countries’ wrestlers are also physically exhausting themselves at practice everyday. Come August, what will make the difference then is their mental training and attitude because when it comes to being the best in the world, the physical skills are a given. We can see this attitude on display in interviews and press conferences where champions project a supreme confidence and self-assuredness that can sometimes come across as cocky. We see it, too, in the way they compete and how calm they appear despite losing late in a match, like Kyle Snyder last year at the World Championships. What is different about these champions’ attitude and how does that translate to success on and off the mat?
The first difference in a champion’s attitude is their approach to practice and training. Where the average wrestler dreads practice because it is physically exhausting and stressful mentally, the champion knows that stress and exhaustion are the side effects of getting better. Instead of focusing on how difficult practice is going to be, someone like Kyle Snyder focuses on how it is an opportunity to get better. He knows that every extra mat sprint improves his cardio, that every extra single-leg refines his technique, and every extra set in the weight room makes him stronger. The average wrestler complains that practice is hard and tries to do the minimum required, but the champion appreciates the challenge and knows that only by outworking everyone in practice will they rise to the top in competition. Champions go the extra mile in practice, above and beyond what even their coaches require and they try to reach their breaking point every day.
Champions also respond differently to the everyday adversity a wrestler faces. Average wrestlers feels sorry for themselves after losing a match or breaking in practice, while the champion recognizes that adversity is a learning opportunity. They use losses as extra motivation, and they never personalize failure, as Olympian Nate Carr said. They realize that losing a match or making a mistake in practice is not because they failed as a person, but rather that some aspect of their technique or positioning needs improvement. By detaching the adversity from their person, it becomes a solvable issue with opportunity to improve. This is why champions are inspired by adversity, knowing that having lost and needing to make an adjustment to their training will only make achieving their goals all the more satisfying.
Champions set the highest goals possible and expect to reach them and be the best. Cael Sanderson described this as the Why Not Me attitude. Champions know that someone has to win the tournament, and they believe that they deserve to be that person due to the hard work they put in to get there. Champions ask themselves the question of whether they deserve to win and say yes which, according to Nate Carr, means You Expecting Success. 2012 Olympic Champion and 4-time World Champion, Jordan Burroughs puts it another way, saying that “the best philosophy is to…to focus on self, and personify a confident swagger that your best is better than their best”, and Kyle Snyder at the 2015 World Championships said, “I wasn’t going to walk off the mat here without bringing home a gold medal.” The best wrestlers expect to perform their best when it matters most.
Every wrestler competing in Rio this summer wants to win an Olympic Gold Medal. They all have put in countless hours of physical training, but their attitude may well be the difference between winning and losing this summer. More important than winning and losing, though, is that the attitude these wrestlers develop carries over off the mat. The perspective they develop lasts a lifetime, and it’s an attitude we can all develop, too. We can all approach training at our respective crafts with gratitude for the opportunity to get better. We can all appreciate adversity as a chance for personal growth and remember that it never reflects a personal failure. We can all believe that we are just as worthy of achieving our goals as anyone else.
We can all ask ourselves, why not me?
