The Environment of Greatness
Note this piece is the third in a series on the life lessons of wrestling on and off the mat.
I remember vividly the first time I ever walked into a wrestling room. I was in the fourth grade and had come to Newton North High School for my first ever open mats, not knowing what to expect. I walked through the wooden door and saw a room with padded blue mats on three of the walls and a wrestling mat covering the ground. The fourth wall had a giant bulletin board that was covered with posters of Olympic Champion wrestlers, inspiring wrestling quotes, and articles about the power of wrestling. Above one of the walls with the padded blue mats was the board showing the depth chart with the names of all the wrestling in the varsity lineup, and another wall had a painting of the Newton North Tiger. Walking in that first time, I sensed something special about this environment. In the years that followed, as I spent many hundreds of hours training there, I came to realized what exactly it was that I had felt that first time: the feeling of possibility. I sensed that the wrestling room was a place where dreams had the possibility of coming true. I now realize that was no accident; the room was carefully designed to create that feeling — to make people set lofty goals and work hard to achieve them.
Coach John Staulo had created an environment that was designed intentionally to motivate his wrestlers to improve their wrestling and to forget about everything else. This environment, in turn, attracted the types of people who wanted to go for greatness, repelling people who were looking to fool around and not take it seriously. Looking back now, I attribute having access to this training environment to be one of the key reasons why I was able to have such a successful high school career, and I now recognize the importance of creating the right environment for the success in any endeavor.
Coach Staulo worked hard to design a wrestling room that supported the athletic development of his team in obvious and subtle ways. First, he made sure that the wrestling room had all the training equipment we could ever need. It had a wrestling mat, but Coach Staulo also had a giant box full of extra wrestling shoes of all different sizes. He installed a pull up bar, a climbing peg board, and dumbbells too. Less obvious than the training equipment but equally important were all the photos and posters Coach Staulo put up around the room. These posters showed you the many different faces of greatness at every level and encouraged you to dream big, whether that meant earning a spot in the varsity lineup, winning an All-State title, or becoming an Olympic Champion. Being able to look around and see people who were successful not only showed it was possible, but the looks on their faces also showed you it was worth the effort. Yet another thing Coach Staulo did to make the wrestling room a supportive environment was his open access policy. If you were one of Coach Staulo’s wrestlers then the room was always open to you, whether during the school day, on the weekends, or over the summer. He made sure that we always knew we could work out there, even going as far as introducing us to the custodial staff so they could open the room for us when he was busy.
Although the wrestling room was always open, it never seemed to draw a crowd. This was because the room was designed so thoughtfully that there was too little room for distraction. The only things to do in the wrestling room were wrestling related; you were either wrestling, talking about wrestling, or learning about wrestling. Because there was nothing that was not wrestling related in the room, people who weren’t truly passionate about wrestling didn’t want to hang around there. The only people who did were people who loved wrestling and wanted to support wrestlers and our goals. In other words, by carefully designing the physical space, Coach Staulo was able to attract only people who would positively impact his wrestlers and help us achieve our goals.
Whatever your goals are, training in the right environment can make the difference between success and failure. Carefully designing your environment results in a space that energizes you and constantly reminds you that success is possible and worth the effort. It also means ruthlessly eliminating every possible distraction, including people. The right environment is just as important off the mat as well; it applies to getting your school work done, being productive on the job, writing your blog post, and personal relationships. My friend Jim Harshaw talks about this on his Wrestling with Success Podcast and calls this the Environment of Excellence, and it could not be more important to accomplishing your goals.
So is your environment supporting the goals you want to accomplish?
