5 Peak Season Pitfalls
Wrestlers! You are in the home stretch. The season is a marathon, and how you navigate this next month or so will dictate whether you can continue on the momentum you’ve worked so hard to build…or flame out due to overtraining and under recovering.
Here are 5 common strategies (that may even sound good on the surface) to avoid as you work towards your goals in Youngstown:
1. Increasing training volume
It takes a massive amount of power and energy to get a car moving off the line and onto the freeway. Once it’s up to 65mph it takes considerably less energy to maintain that speed. Think of your conditioning the same way. You spent the preseason and early season building your “engine” and now you can maintain that without the need to add a bunch of extra practices or workouts. Now, I’m not advocating taking a bunch of time off, but adding more on top of your routine now can be counter productive.
2. Neglecting nutrition
The season is brutally long. By now your wrestler probably has some wear and tear on their body, and we are in the middle of cold and flu season. The last thing you want is the interruption of illness, a small injury, or the fatigue that comes from being UNDER recovered. Focusing on nutrition, hydration and proper rest will go a long way to keeping your wrestler healthy down the stretch.
3. Ignoring nagging injuries
Speaking of staying healthy – it’s inevitable that your wrestler has something bothering them by this time of year. With over a month to go before the state tournament, now would be the time to take 3-4 days off from the mat to let that strained trap muscle finally heal up. A couple days off now won’t hurt them, but “toughing it out” and carrying that injury into states could do just that.
4. Focusing on early season results
Maybe your wrestler lost earlier in the season to a kid they will see again in Youngstown. It does not matter. Same thing goes for if they won in December, it really means nothing now. Look at march as a whole new season, and don’t dwell on past losses or feel too confident from victories from earlier.
5. Looking ahead
A couple years ago, one of my HS wrestlers that was picked to make the state finals lost in the first round. He told me that warming up for that match he was “thinking about what he was gonna wear when he ran out for the finals on Saturday”. He got caught looking ahead and forgot to wrestle the match right in front of him. Luckily he battled back for 3rd, but his mental mistake potentially cost him a state title. Keep your wrestler focused on the task at hand – the next go, the next set, next match.
Need a structured program to follow? I have advanced and home training programs for youth wrestlers. All programs have technique videos for every single exercise – no guess work! Download the Coach Myers S&C App HERE
