Mental Preparation Guide for Wrestlers
As a competitive wrestler, your time is spent refining your technique, running sprints, lifting weights, and doing anything else that prepares your body for competition. To compete, though, everything must come together with confidence. This is why mental preparation is so important — you cannot have one (physical abilities) without the other (mental preparation). It takes most wrestlers years to master the mental aspects of wrestling. However, this guide will give you a head start by providing you with information and common practices to help you prepare your mind for the match.
Positive Self-Talk
One of the biggest influences on your mental state is self-talk, or simply how you speak to yourself in your head. Most young athletes don’t realize that they are talking to themselves as thoughts move fluidly through their minds. How you talk to yourself before a match, though, could essentially “make” or “break” your performance. Below you will find a few tips on how to talk to yourself in a more positive manner in order to boost your confidence before a match.
Eliminate Negatives
In order to compete with confidence, you must eliminate all of your negative thoughts. It’s completely normal to be nervous before a match, but negative thoughts can fester in your mind and turn nervousness into fear. Recognize your negative thoughts and cut them off immediately. The best way to eliminate these thoughts is simple. Say something, like “stop” or “no,” in your head (or aloud) anytime a thought crosses your mind that isn’t going to help your performance.
Reinforce Your Confidence
Sometimes you may need to remind yourself of why you deserve to win. Repeating positive thoughts in your head over and over will help you maintain a confident state of mind. This positive reinforcement will make you feel good about getting ready to step onto the mat. Below are a few examples of things wrestlers may repeat to themselves before a match:
“I’ve worked harder than anyone else”
“My technique is too good for him. He can’t stop my single, tilts, etc.”
Even repeating words, like “champion,” can have a positive impact on your thought process.
Convert Your Thoughts
Another technique you may use when coming across negative thoughts is converting them into more positive or constructive thoughts. For example, if you’re nervous and think to yourself, “This guy is a state champ, how can I beat him?” you’re already halfway beat. But, if you convert that statement into something more constructive, like “this guy is a state champ, I am going to do whatever I need to do to beat him” you’re ready and mentally in the match. This type of conversion process will also put you on track to use visualization to positively alter your state of mind.
Visualize Your Win
Visualization is a very effective technique used by athletes in many sports, but it is especially beneficial to wrestlers. In essence, visualization is when you picture or imagine yourself performing specific actions successfully. You will commonly hear youth and scholastic coaches tell their wrestlers to “go through the match” in their head, which is simply visualization. Below is an example of how a wrestler may visualize his match:
Get comfortable: Start by going through the entire sequence of tasks that you must complete in order to start the match. These are typically checking in at the scoring table, putting on your anklet, shaking hands with your opponent, etc. Visualize this entire procedure.
Picture the match: Then, think about your first actions once the referee blows his whistle to signal the start of the match. Picture how you will move, how you will set up your takedowns, what you will do when chain wrestling, etc.
Positive reinforcement: Be confident when visualizing all of the techniques you will hit.
One way to do this is by replaying or remembering previous times that you’ve successfully completed a specific move or action. For example, if you want to visualize shooting a high crotch and then changing over to a double leg, think of all of the times in your matches when you hit the move perfectly.
You can also picture drilling the move perfectly during practice. Remembering past success will not only prepare you mentally to hit the move when you see an opening for it, but it will also boost your confidence before the match.
Mental Edge
In addition to specific techniques or actions, you may also visualize goal-oriented images, such as the referee raising your hand or standing on top of the awards podium. This will also help to put you in a winning state of mind.
Take Care of the Physical
One of the themes you’ll notice in this guide is confidence. Believing in your abilities as a wrestler is a huge part of the mental side of wrestling. In order to be confident as a competitor, you must have something to be confident about. This is something that can only be accomplished prior to the day of a match.
Push yourself to your physical limits during every training session. When drilling technique, demand perfection. When conditioning, do the best you can, and don’t give up on yourself. Over time, this will make you mentally tough. And before you step onto the mat, think about all of the hard work you’ve put in, and feel confident that you have done everything in your power to prepare yourself. Simply put, taking care of the physical side of wrestling will also give you a mental edge.
