Wrestling is a sport that teaches you about life and facing adversity. It teaches you to adjust and when in bad times to just keep going. It teaches you that everything isn’t perfect, but you just need to do it. It teaches you to finish strong when you think you can’t go any longer.

An important part of any sport is maintaining good grades and not letting it take over your entire life. Some people get too caught up and think they could live off of it, but what happens if you get injured and can’t play it anymore? That’s why you have to look at the whole picture, as my coach says.

Wrestling is more mental than physical; a lot of wrestlers think they have to beat their bodies to be a winner. You have to work your body, but not to the point where it hurts to walk. An alternative to physical training is visual training where reading and watching videos are equally as important. But in a match, you need a strong mental game. Especially if it’s close, you can’t buckle or worry about the score, you just have to keep wrestling and give it your all. Also, a lot of people don’t like cutting weight, but when you’re cutting weight you have to think positive and think that you’re doing this to improve and own your weight class.

Everybody has different approaches to cutting weight. Some people do it to either have more strength than the opponent or to avoid another wrestler in a weight class, but you should never try to avoid challenging wrestlers. Some people hate it and think it’s ridiculous; it really has to be your decision because you either have to be all in or all out. If you are cutting weight, you should not starve yourself, you just have to eat healthy and sweat a lot.

Wrestling is a great sport, and may be one of the toughest sports.  I cut weight for tournaments and what I eat is a strict diet, including chicken, fish, broccoli, and brown rice.   One day a week I have a carb up day with protein pasta. Also, when I go running, I run with a sweat suit for a mile every day then I wear thermals to wrestling practice. For breakfast I eat two boiled eggs and toast.

Wrestling has taught me a lot in my experience. It has taught me to be humble about my accomplishments. It taught me that if you work hard you can achieve your goals. It taught me when you fall you have to get back up. It taught me emotions that I never felt before such as having to get back up after losing, the feeling of pride when you have your hand raised as the victor, and knowing that all the hard work is finally paying off. Wrestling takes dedication, hard work, and self-motivation. My goals for next year is to be a state champ in folk-style wrestling which is college wrestling, defend my state title for freestyle(international wrestling), and become a national champ.