One of the most commonly used metaphors for a high school sports season is referring to it as a “grind.” The depiction is usually a reference to the aspects that go beyond the box score from the grueling practices and lengthy road trips, to the inevitable injuries and heartbreaking losses.

Although those challenges occur in nearly every sport, few high school seasons deal with the mental and physical strain as much as wrestling. Not only do wrestling practices often push the grapplers to the point of pure exhaustion, but no other high school sport requires its participants to be at or under a certain weight in order to compete. This often results in most of the competitors needing to maintain a strict, low calorie diet and sometimes enduring long periods of time with minimal to no food or liquid intake. Empty stomachs, sore muscles and bruised egos are commonplace in the sport.

The man who is widely considered as one of the best wrestlers in the world today is American Jordan Burroughs. After winning a World title in 2011, Burroughs took home Olympic gold in 2012 and followed that with another World title in 2013. One of Burroughs’s most prominent mottos is “embrace the grind.” It’s a mantra adopted by many wrestlers. However, it’s one thing to be an elite wrestler at the world, college or high school level,  it is quite another to be to a marginal wrestler who rarely gets his hand raised in victory.

It’s no secret that in order to be an elite level wrestler, an arduous amount of dedication and diligence is required. Success does not come easily or quickly. So a large part of a high school coach’s responsibility is retention of those marginal wrestlers who start to consider that the setbacks are not worth the sacrifice.  Promoting wrestling as a “fun” sport rarely works. Even if a competitor considers “winning” as the most fun part of the sport, many are driven more by a hatred of losing than a love of winning, but there are ways in which coaches can break up the grind and perhaps make the sport more fun.

First of all, wrestlers should participate in other sports and not wrestle year-round. Even the best wrestlers in the world do not compete 12 months a year. At the high school level, four months is enough of a physical and mental toll. That’s not to say that wrestlers should never compete in the off-season (most of the top-level wrestlers do) but it shouldn’t be the “grind” of the high school season, especially in the fall--the season preceding the winter high school wrestling season.

There are several fall sports that are considered great compliments to wrestling with football being at the top of the list. The combination of balance, footwork, body control and bursts of power are vital in both sports. Not every wrestler is built to be a football player, so other sports such as cross country, soccer and tennis that require physical conditioning can only enhance a wrestler’s preparation for the winter and, more importantly, break up the monotony of specialization. If participation in a fall sport is not on the docket, then being a part of a structured weight-training program is critical for injury prevention and strength development. Don’t let wrestlers give you the “I’m lifting on my own” excuse. Most schools have an adequate weight room with a qualified instructor teaching proper technique. Learning proper weightlifting technique in the off-season also makes in-season weightlifting more productive because less time is needed for instruction.

Once the beginning of the wrestling season nears, have your captains coordinate two weeks of optional strength and conditioning workouts. Unlike “open gyms” which are common to other sports during the pre-season, having an “open mat” is not advisable. Eager wrestlers have a tendency to want to really test where they are competitively with their teammates at the beginning of a new season and this could cause injuries. Plus, in conjunction with the “wrestling season is a grind” reputation, adding two more weeks of mat time when the wrestlers are not being coached is also not beneficial or even allowable in many schools.

When official practice begins, that practice intensity needs to be a gradual progression for the first two weeks. There really is no other high school sport like wrestling and the athletes need to re-acclimate themselves to the physical rigors of a two-hour practice. Coaches also want to limit the attrition of wrestlers who are new to the program or possibly just trying the sport out for the first time. If you hit them with extremely difficult practices during the first week, several may not show up for the second week.  Some coaches may adopt the “well, if the going gets tough, the tough get going” ideology to try to weed those who may be weaker, but those are also usually the same coaches who don’t have the depth they need deeper into the season. You can’t find a diamond in the rough if you clean out the quarry during the first week. The focus should be on teaching fundamental technique and developing a conditioning base. Of course, you want to have your team prepared for the first competition, but the odds are that you will have a group of core returning starters that are already doing the extra things to make themselves better. This may include coming in for morning runs or getting extra workouts in the evenings.  The new wrestlers will soon discover that getting those extra workouts in will eventually help separate them from average wrestlers, but it shouldn’t be something they feel forced to do. Wrestling is one of the best examples of a “you get out of it, what you put it to it” sport.

When the season begins in full, a typical week usually involves one or two dual meets a week and a one-day or two-day tournament on the weekend. This means that the athletes will often need to make their weight class three to four times a week. Some wrestlers think that the best way to lose weight is to load up with as many layers of clothing as they can the day before a meet and sweat off several pounds. This is a myth that can lead to unhealthy dehydration. Wearing more layers slows a wrestler’s movement during practice and they burn fewer calories.

The best way to make weight consistently is to maintain a healthy diet of regular, low calorie meals and work out multiple times a day. On the morning of an afternoon weigh-in, we hold optional practices. Sundays are also our regular off days because they often follow a grueling tournament, but we do often hold optional open gyms in the afternoon for wrestlers who want to get a strength or conditioning workout in.

Coaches can do several things to break up the grind of a four-month season. Days off are important, both for physical recuperation and a mental break. We do hold Sunday afternoon workouts for the first two months, but we taper those back for the last two months. High school wrestling season also falls during Thanksgiving and Christmas in most states, which can cause many wrestlers to increase their weight, but I think those holidays are important for students to spend with their families, so I try not to schedule anything too close to those dates. The wrestlers can have some time off and not worry about getting back down to their weight right away. I think it’s also imperative to have at least a couple of weekends off during the season where you don’t have a tournament or match scheduled,

Another way to break up the grind is to vary the practices. Learning a routine is part of any sport, but there are ways to switch things up so it doesn’t seem like one day just blends into the next.

For example, since we never have a match on a Wednesday but always have a practice, we have “Backwards Wednesday.” We run in the opposite direction of what we usually do and warm-up in the opposite end. We also only play country western music to warm-up on Wednesdays (while the other days are dominated by hard rock). We also do a tumbling and gymnastics routine for warm-ups on Wednesday to increase our balance, flexibility and agility. Wednesday is also reserved for “Big Stairs.” Our school has four flights of stairs, so our end-of-practice conditioning on that day consists of various sprinting and body carrying drills. The sprints are timed, so they help each individual monitor their conditioning progression. Some practices we focus more on technique, others we do more live wrestling, plus we mix in film and strategy sessions.

A philosophy that we impart upon the wrestlers that also deals with the grind aspect of the sport is “love what you hate and hate what you love.” This can work on several levels. For many, their first “love-hate” relationship is with those stairs. Wednesday’s announcement of “Big Stairs” usually brings groans at the beginning of the season, but eventually it becomes a badge of honor in building mental and physical toughness. We encourage the wrestlers to attack the stairs like they would an opponent and not let them break you mentally. The other “love-hate” relationship that must be developed is with food. Wrestlers need to eat, but they need to eat the right things. They must come to hate the high-calorie killers like cake and ice cream and learn to love yogurt, fish and vegetables. They should be repulsed by soda pop and enamored by skim milk. Making better diet choices will lessen one of the other contributing factors of the season’s grind which is a body weight that dramatically yo-yos.

Despite the fact that the word “fun” isn’t typically associated with a wrestling season, the fact is that any productive outlets that can divert from some of the season’s grind should always be considered. During our open gyms on Sundays, we usually play no contact ultimate football in the big gymnasium. (When I wrestled in college, our wrestling room was in an old basketball gym, so we would play hoops before practice—much to our coach’s chagrin.) During pre-practice, the captains run some of the same wrestling-based games that we do with our elementary wrestlers like human chess, sharks and minnows, sumo wrestling, and one-legged pin ball. We have jump rope and strength training routines. We do yoga and plyometrics. We have several different conditioning workouts that we do with names like Noah’s Ark, Three-Man Weave, Four Corners, Rain Dance, 10 to 1, Wall Sprint Relays and the aforementioned Big Stairs. If you can find some free nights to do team-bonding activities such as bowling, sledding or paint ball, that also can break up the season into more memorable moments off the mat.

When we run our spring and summer club practices, we specifically say that the season won’t be the “grind” of the high school season. Practices are limited to two to three days a week in two separate 6-week blocks. We also encourage them to not worry about making a weight and to participate in spring and summer sports. We even take members of the team on a summer camping trip to a different location every year. Every activity we do in the off-season with the wrestlers is done with the intention of having them look forward to the coming season. We want them to feel like they are a part of something special and surrounded by teammates and coaches who really care about them. Very few will ever be state champions, but we want every one of them to feel like they are an important part of the team with some of their best memories in life coming from being a part of our program.  When the regular season and even their high school career ends, the comment we most often hear from our wrestlers is how quickly the time seemed to fly by and I believe that is attributed to the fact that the season doesn’t have to be a grind.