Warming up for competition is a non-negotiable part of any athlete’s routine, yet maintaining energy levels throughout a long competition day is often overlooked. Managing energy across multiple rounds ensures you're mentally and physically prepared to perform at your peak in every match. From the initial morning warm-up, through re-warming between matches, to cooling down afterward, each phase is essential for recovery and staying "in the zone."

Rehydrating after weigh-ins is a critical step for an athlete to ensure their body is ready for competition. Wrestlers, whether they're beginners or seasoned competitors, need to pay special attention to how they manage their hydration after weight-ins as well as throughout the entire competition day.

Wrestling has a stigma about weight cutting, and often the wrestling community is perpetuating it ourselves. In my opinion, it is emphasized much too heavily and much too young. Through competing, coaching, and educating young wrestlers about the sport, I have observed that our young athletes are taught they might only be successful if they compete at a lower weight. The number of males and females I've spoken to who have decided not to continue their career onto a collegiate or international level, have mostly been due to burn out from weight cutting. When does it become impractical to maintain a weight class? Should our minds, bodies, technique, and love for the sport suffer? This post is meant to be a guide for young athletes to navigate the pressures they may be receiving to cut weight.

How often have you arrived at competition and realized you just started your period? Did you have all you needed, or did the stress of being with out the proper tools wear you down? Learning good habits which help support you during your period are a must for female athletes. Being prepared is key, but often we don't have a clue what we should be prepared for! Let's talk strategies and tools we can utilize so the day of competition is a little less painful.

"The Complete Guide to Sports Bras for Female Wrestlers" explores the crucial factors in selecting the perfect sports bra for wrestling, focusing on fit, material, and design. It provides personal insight into the dress coding challenges female wrestlers face and aims to provide female wrestlers, coaches, and parents with the best information to compete confidently.

Hindsight is 20/20. Most of the time, we can't tell how well we have prepared for a competition until we have gone through the preparation and competition process. But with experience, you can get better at recognizing what works and what doesn't and become more self aware of when you are on or off the right track. Taking actual steps towards becoming more self aware is extremely important. If you don't already have a sport journal, GET ONE. Recording progress, workouts, results, thoughts, and feelings are so important in the steps of becoming more self aware. You'll find out how beneficial it is to have a written record of how and what you did to prepare.

For every sport competition, we have our typical packing list of must haves: uniform, food, water, lucky socks. But the more we compete, the more we find ourselves in situations where we didn't have what we needed. And even though we try and buffer for most situations, not everyone knows what to pack just in case. Here are the 5 items you should never forget to bring with you to a competition.

As combat athletes and especially wrestlers, we face a very different set of challenges when it comes to choosing our workout gear. Being in tight fitting leggings, shorts, or competition singlets requires us to look at our undergarments from a different perspective. Gone are the days where we can wear our favorite lucky neon pink undies for competition... especially if we appreciate some modesty. When it comes to wearing spandex, we have to know how "sheer is our gear" before we get into a stance. I have had my fair share of undergarment faux pas, at practices and competitions. Here are my recommendations to help you navigate the world of sport and underwear!

As a former athlete transitioning into coaching, I have had the opportunity to work with some of the best coaches and athletes in the country. This summer I had the opportunity to travel around the country helping youth athletes improve in the off season. From clinics, to the Freestyle National tournament, to cadet and junior world team camp I have watched a variety of wrestling. As the new season approaches many athletes have asked what they need to do to have a successful season. After evaluating some of our nation’s best youth athletes these are my recommendations for the upcoming season.

No matter what level you are on currently, reaching your next level or goal comes from introspection and learning how and where you can make improvements. However, as you start exploring where you can make changes as an athlete, it is important to not fall into the trap of what you expect the end results to be, or how you should look getting there. Here are my top 5 training myths for reaching a higher level. 

Having a journal for sport is so much more than writing down a specific technique, or pouring out your emotions on the page. Journaling becomes a log of where you are at a certain point in your training. You begin to see patterns in your behaviors or actions, and how you handle situations that arise in sport. Journaling can become your place to tell it like it is, and learn to move forward despite how you felt.

In the combat world, we often see technique translating from one sport to another. One of the most translatable combat cross-overs, is judo to wrestling. When I started wrestling, I had difficulty with my technique as judo was my original combat sport. This created a strange style of wrestling for me at first, as I didn’t know how to combine the two. However, I started seeing a progression in both sports once I learned how to marry the two styles. Modifying the moves from judo to wrestling can be a bit tricky, but doing so can really improve your skill set. Applying judo concepts to wrestling throws will help to create a better understanding of throws overall. This article is a compilation of the judo throws I have been able to successfully incorporate into my wrestling.