I can't begin to tell you how many women and girls have shared with me their concern for getting "bulky." In order to avoid this, they focus hours on the elliptical, running on treadmills, and climbing the stair master. Afterwards, they may walk across the gym and pick up 5, 10, or 15 pound dumbbells to do a couple sets or curls or presses. I rarely see women curl or press dumbbells that are so heavy they can barely finish their set of 8-10 repetitions. Why is this?

As wrestlers, we get into extreme positions. If you have knee instability, you are putting yourself at risk for tweaks, sprains, or the worst: ACL tears. The first gif shows a position I often see female wrestlers in. The knees rock in, out, or a combination of the two. This indicates that the muscles of the leg and surrounding tendons (connects muscle to bone) and ligaments (connects bone to bone) which support the knee joint are weak and compromised. If this improper knee position continues while doing jumps, weight lifting, stance drills and wrestling, you can often expect injuries.

As a beginner wrestler, how do you become effective in competition without obsessing over learning every technique? When we focus solely on the need to perfect technique, it can often prevent you from seeing the big picture. What is sport, but accepting the challenge from another competitor to compete to your best abilities? By simplifying the idea of sport, we can focus on being a fierce competitor, and focus on where to position yourself for the best advantage. I've seen many great wrestlers who learned how to be tough competitors without high level technique. In good time, the technique will come with work and repetition.

Competition naturally brings on a count of wins versus losses, who beat who, and how many teams were made when you competed at an elite level. None of this is inherently bad, until we start letting those elements define our self worth. We have all heard stories from past athletes, no matter what level they competed at, of the lessons from sport which have carried over into their careers and personal lives. This happens for a reason, and they share these stories because they are proud of the characteristics sport has given them. They discover that the wins and losses have faded from memory, and they have reaped the benefits of resiliency and determination. It helped them become successful people in life. The athletes who stepped away from sport with a sour taste in their mouth often leave because they focused too much on the wins or losses. They never saw the lessons sport had to give, and often have a harder time adapting to what life throws at them.

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.

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.

Giving yourself the opportunity to be okay with the ups and downs of training is important. No one has consistently perfect training sessions, no matter how positive they seem or how awesome their workouts look on social media. Here are my tips so you don't get hung up on a tough training session:

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.

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.

My dad, Lee Allen, was a remarkable human being. Quiet and reserved, he was a two-time Olympic wrestler, arguably the most grueling sport in the world. A self-made man in every sense of the word, he grew up with nothing but the support of his family, working for everything he had.

We are often our own worst enemies with healed injuries. When we start noticing the inevitable progression towards competition nears closer and closer, and we start loosing our heads. Those last, critical steps towards a full recovery are missed, and we become anxious and over focused on being back to sport in full. What we don't realize is, we already have the tools in our pocket to be ready for competition. It is not the first time we are competing! But are our bodies ready to adapt to the demands we must place on it? 

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. 

The warm up before competition is important and critical to have before you compete. As you go through the normal routine that is typically repeated from practice, we tend to forget that it doen't end there. For those athletes who have multiple rounds, or have to wait long periods of time after their warm up before their competition begins, it becomes even more crucial to make sure we are paying attention to our bodies, and what it needs in order to compete.

I seriously, seriously appreciate the honesty that girls approach me with when they want advice on injuries. I can just hear in their voices that gut fear of falling behind. From experiencing plenty of the same fear myself, I wanted to give some insight into what it has taken me to come back from an injury and be able to try out for an Olympic Team a few months later.I seriously, seriously appreciate the honesty that girls approach me with when they want advice on injuries. I can just hear in their voices that gut fear of falling behind. From experiencing plenty of the same fear myself, I wanted to give some insight into what it has taken me to come back from an injury and be able to try out for an Olympic Team a few months later.

Plan, plan, plan. Yep, I'm telling you guys again about planning and I am keeping with the theme of preparation. It is important for a wrestler to have their plan set for rehydration after weigh-ins. This will include having the proper food and drink you want to consume, as well as having a well planned time schedule. 

Majority of our time and effort is spent learning technique and strategies to prep for competition day. Your strategy should also include prepping your mind. And this is much different from the mental strength we build while we push ourselves in the practice room. These mental strategies are all about giving our minds the best tools to allow our bodies to perform. 

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.

Fargo! The crown jewel of our nation’s national high school tournaments. A huge undertaking for all involved. I've watched girls prepping, planning, excitement stirring...it's the biggest (figuratively and by actual size) tournament of the year for high school athletes who continue on to freestyle and greco. For a small percentage, it's triumph and success, and for others, it's heartbreak and disappointment. The first year I coached Fargo, I had just competed three and a half months prior at the 2016 Olympic Trials. Switching gears on my perspective was a challenge. I had just spent a career completely focusing on myself and my own training. You don't always remember the similar struggles of your youth, especially when you spend years conditioning yourself to a mindset always focused on moving forward and improving. However it was exciting to support young athletes through this huge event, as I had just done the same.