Elite Youth Wrestling

By Daniel Harding

Wrestling is the world's oldest sport, and yet it's one of the least understood; misconceptions and stereotypes abound. Today, wrestling is also the fastest growing sport, thanks in part to the meteoric rise in popularity of mixed martial arts and the UFC.

Guiding your child through the sport of wrestling-when done right-can be one of the

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel Harding
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781647468200

Book preview

Elite Youth Wrestling

Your Blueprint to Helping Your Child Win on the Mat—And in Life.

By

Daniel Harding Jr.

Elite Youth Wrestling © 2021 by Daniel Harding Jr.

All rights reserved. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the author.

ISBNs:

978-1-64746-818-7

978-1-64746-819-4

Printed in the United States of America.

Background pattern Description automatically generated with low confidence

Dedicated to Connor.

I’ll always be in your corner.

Contents

Foreword

Meet Our Experts

1st Period: Getting Started

Brace for Impact

Bring the Energy

The Family Factor

Goal Setting

Myth Busters: Skin Infections and Cauliflower Ear

Case Study: Ryan the Slow Starter

Practice Partners

Winning Favor with the Coaches

Terminology/Scoring 101

Never Stop Learning

Beware the Gram

Wrestling as a Punishment or Reward

Special Consideration for Girl Parents

2nd Period: Training

Off-Season/Freestyle Wrestling

Summer Camp

Home-Mat Advantage

Time Off

Breaking from the Pack

Private Coaching

Strength Training

Strength Training (Frequently Asked Questions)

Specialization

Running for Wrestling

Yoga for Wrestling

Mindset Training

3rd Period: Competition

When should my son/daughter compete in tournaments?

Case Study: Too Young Billy

Understanding Brackets

Packing for a Tournament

Weight Management

Case Study: Tony and the Wrongest Way to Lose Weight

Beware the Concession Stand

Portion Control

The Pre-Match Pep Talk (Don’t Do It)

Case Study: Jack the Pressure Cooker

Never Yell These Phrases

Gym Head

Breaking Through Barriers

Case Study: Aiden and the Little Victories

Making Traveling Fun

Tale of the Tape

Be a Gracious Winner

Medal Chasing

Case Study: Sean the Unsung Hero

The Biggest Pitfall

Case Study: Luke the Late Bloomer

Overtime: Life Lessons

The Covid Effect

Final Word with Ohio State Coach Tom Ryan

Case Study: My Story

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Thanks to the explosion in popularity of mixed martial arts and the UFC, wrestling has become the fastest growing sport in the country. But for those who haven’t grow up in a wrestling family there can be a steep learning curve when getting started. Unlike mainstream sports like football or baseball, wrestling isn’t something you watch casually on holidays or seek out for a fun family outing. Almost everyone knows there are three strikes in baseball and that you score a touchdown by running the ball into the end zone; only a fraction of the population knows that an escape is worth one point and a reversal is worth two.

No, when your child first brings home a flyer, or a fellow parent encourages you to give wrestling a try, visions of Hulk Hogan and The Rock likely flash in your mind. Or worse, you recall the stereotypes you heard in the hallowed halls of your high school back in the day. Sauna suits, sadistic coaches, starvation and those strange tights wrestlers wear send many parents running to basketball registration.

My goal in writing Elite Youth Wrestling is to help flatten what can be a mountainous learning curve for parents who are new to the sport by passing along lessons learned from some of the most successful coaches in the industry, as well as my own 15-plus years of coaching youth wrestling. A blend of personal anecdotes and interviews with the subject authorities, this book will hopefully serve as a road map that guides you and your child to success in this highly demanding, life-changing sport. In the chapters to follow we’ll delve into topics ranging from nutrition and weight management to burnout, mindset training and so much more.

Considering that you picked up this book and read this far, I will venture a guess that you’re already starting to understand the positive influences wrestling can have on your son or daughter. Before we begin, I’d like you to ask yourself: Why did you sign your child up for sports in the first place? Is it so they can earn a scholarship or win glory and Olympic gold? I’m sure this is the motive for some parents, but I think for most of us, we want our children to get exercise, build teamwork and sportsmanship skills and learn how to pick themselves up after a loss. Well, with all due respect to other sports, wrestling teaches these lessons like none other. The sting of loss, thrill of victory and volatile ups and downs in wrestling are too steep; your child can’t strive (note: I didn’t say achieve) for greatness on the mat without changing lives–both theirs and yours.

When interviewing Ohio State RTC Strength and Conditioning Coach and new youth wrestling parent Dustin Myers, we got to talking about why wrestling is such a powerful vehicle for molding young people. I’ll never forget his answer. Wrestling can be used as a metaphor for life in so many ways, he said. We don’t always control what happens to us [in life], but we can always control our effort. I think that’s something that’s true with wrestling as well. I always tell my kids that you can’t control who your opponent is, but you can control your effort. You can control your preparation; you can control how much sleep you get; you can control if you’re eating the things you’re supposed to eat; you control whether you live a clean lifestyle. We need to take responsibility for those things and not wait for somebody to save us. When you step out on the mat to wrestle, no one is going to save you.

I keep coming back to that last part about learning to take responsibility. Of all the lessons this sport teaches, I believe that one is something young people today need now more than ever. I hope this book gives you a strong foundation for success in wrestling. More importantly, I hope wrestling gives your child the foundation for success in life.

Meet Our Experts

Mike Moor

A former Division 1 wrestler, Moor worked for the FBI for more than seven years, which included a role on the bureau’s prestigious crisis negotiation team. The wrestling life called him back to the mat in 2015 when he joined the team at Wrestling Mindset. Now a leader in that company, he’s also the Director of the W4R Training Center in Houston, Texas. @Mindset_Mike

Ken Chertow

A three-time All American for Penn State, Chertow represented the United States as an Olympian in 1988. After his decorated athletic career, he served as a coach for Penn State and Ohio State. In 1994 he decided to pursue his passion for coaching youth wrestlers full-time. His gold-medal training camp system is one of the longest running in our sport; he has trained a who’s who of the top wrestlers from the time they were in elementary school. @kenchertowwrestling

Dustin Myers

Coach Myers is one of the foremost authorities on strength training for combat sports; he is currently enjoying incredible success as the Strength Coach for the Ohio Regional Training Center at Ohio State University. Partner at supplement company Max Effort Muscle and Owner of Old School Gym in Ohio, he’s quickly becoming a household name in the wrestling community. @coachmyers_gutcheck

Tom Ryan

Once a star pupil of wrestling legend Dan Gable, Ryan is now writing his own chapter in coaching lore. When he was the head coach of Hofstra University on Long Island, Ryan built the program into a national powerhouse before taking over the Ohio State program, which he led to an NCAA team title in 2015. His protégé include six individual national champions and an Olympic gold medalist. Where Ryan separates himself from the pack of elite college coaches is with his ability to create a culture that yields leaders on and off the mat. @buckeye158

Dan Harding

A former high school and college wrestler, Dan has dedicated over 15 years to coaching youth wrestlers in New York and now in Connecticut. The lessons learned on the mat have allowed him to achieve a high-level of success in media, including becoming the youngest-ever editor-in-chief of a national boating magazine. Instilling things like mental toughness, accountability, grit and goal setting in young people through the sport of wrestling is what he’s most passionate about. @eliteyouthwrestling

1st Period

Getting Started

More enduringly than any other sport, wrestling teaches self-control and pride. Some have wrestled without great skill–none have wrestled without pride. –Dan Gable

Brace for Impact

Walking into a wrestling room for the first time requires bravery from both you and your child. The first thing a new wrestling parent usually encounters before their first practice is a padded room where kids are running around and quite literally bouncing off the walls. Groups of longtime wrestling parents who share a cult-like bond are catching up in one corner, while coaches with cauliflower ears prepare for practice in the other. The temptation will be strong to help your child put their shoes on and promptly retreat to the car in search of the closest Starbucks. Fight that urge. The best way to flatten the learning curve is to immerse yourself in our world.

In many sports, but especially in wrestling, if you want your child to be successful, you need to think of yourself as the CEO of their experience. Coaches also play a pivotal role in the business that is your child’s wrestling career–I like to think of them as part of the C-Suite. They’re there to guide and nurture, but ultimately, it’s the decisions you make that will direct your child’s career.

Let’s belabor the CEO analogy a bit more. Imagine you’ve just been promoted to the top leadership position in a company you know little–or nothing–about. What would you do first? You’d probably want to talk to the other employees to get a sense of what everyone does and how the pieces of the organization fit together. The employees, in the case of a wrestling program, are the other parents.

You may feel like the new kid in class, but I beseech you, don’t sit off to the side and bury yourself in your phone. (I see that far too often.) Go in with both eyes open and pull up a chair at the cool kids’ table. There are no better resources in the early days of being a wrestling parent than the other parents who are further down the road than you. If you avoid drama and gossip, take a real interest in the sport and ask thoughtful questions, you’ll be amazed at how many people in the wrestling community will go out of their way to help a first-time wrestling parent.

Someone who was exceptionally good at this was my own old man. While some parents may be too intimidated to talk to the parents of the most successful wrestlers, my dad embraced it. Even when I was just a scrawny 96-pounder happy to break my high school’s starting lineup, my dad was forming relationships with the parents of multi-time state champions. There are exceptions to