I, like many others, participated in sports growing up. There were three main sports that I enjoyed through my time in school: Cross Country, Track, and Wrestling.

Wrestling is arguably one of the hardest sports out there. Because the spot is a combat sport, there is a lot of intensive training that goes into it, and the matches are only you vs. another wrestler. If you have a bad match, its all on you.

Of course, this isn’t a post about the sport of wrestling and how hard it is. Instead, I wanted to talk about how the sport itself impacted my daily life. To this day, there is a lot of things that I use daily that I learned from wrestling.

Lesson 1: Using Your Weight

I am a smaller guy. Nowadays, I weigh around 170lbs, but growing up it was rare when I was heavier than 140lbs. Because of that, people didn’t really expect me to have a lot of strength. Of course, people also didn’t realize that I was regularly lifting my body weight or more pretty consistently. In wrestling, there is many times that you will have to pick up someone that is at your weight in order to score points or remain in control of position. This made it important to learn to use my entire body to be able to lift other wrestlers

I think this was best seen when I went to help some people pick up some hay bales. The Family I was helping out assumed that I wouldn’t be able do too much since I was smaller and hadn’t ever been out bucking bales. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle it. Working in a field all day in the middle of summer sounded like it was going to wipe me out.

Once I started though, I realized that the motion for picking up hay bales was similar to the motion of a freestyle wrestling move I knew. After I realized that, the entire day became very easy. I was able to use my legs and hips to distribute the weight of the bales and toss them onto a moving trailer. I was able to do this quickly and efficiently due to the years of practice I had with the motion. I think at one point, I was grabbing the majority of the hay bales during the day.

The family I was working with was pretty impressed at how much I was able to get done, and I even got a few offers from a couple of other people to come back out and make some money from hauling bales.

At the end of the day, I realized how much learning to wrestle impacted my ability to lift things that I otherwise wouldn’t have thought I could. It’s amazing to me how easy lifting could be if you knew how to use your weight properly.

Lesson 2: Breaking Through the Wall

If I had to pick one lesson wrestling taught me, this would be it. I think everyone can relate to getting to a point where you absolutely know you can’t continue. Wrestling taught me that my true limit was well beyond my prior expectations. I learned this lesson well at the Washington Intensive Wrestling Camp.

If you have wrestled in washington, you more than likely have heard stories from this camp. Back when I was in high school, it was one of the toughest wrestling camps in the Pacific Northwest. My freshman year was the first year I had participated in intensive camp. I had no clue what to expect, other than being told I really needed to be in shape before going into the camp.

The first intensive wrestling session chewed me up and spat me out. The intensive sessions consisted of two sections of non-stop live wrestling, while the third session was an intensive cardio or weightlifting workout (usually a combination of the two). To this day, I don’t think I’ve been physically and mentally tested in an athletic situation.

After the first session was completed, I was completely broken down. Physically, every single portion of my body was screaming. My arms and legs were covered in mat burn, and my face was beat up from repeated cross faces over an hour-long period. Mentally, I didn’t think I had what it took to finish this camp. During our break, I laid on my sleeping bag and cried.

 I considered quitting the rest of the day. There were two main reasons I didn’t. One, I was there with my brother, and he absolutely refused to let me quit. He spent half of our rest period giving me a pep talk. The second thing was a tradition. At that time, the Intensive camp was consistently held at Lakeside High School, which was my school at the time. Since I was part of the host wrestling team, there was an unspoken agreement that no one from our school would quit the camp. These two things kept me in the camp. Looking back, I am glad that I stuck it out.

On the second intensive session, I realized something. No matter how tired I got, I was able to keep pushing through. I realized that I could push well beyond what I had thought I could. Yes, of course I was exhausted. Yes, my body was in constant pain after the workouts. But I was able to keep showing up to the workouts and kept pushing through. On a funny tangent, I eventually started wrapping both my hands to help stop getting more and more mat burn, so I looked like I was more ready for a boxing workout then a wrestling workout. Also, the wrapping did nothing, as I still got more mat burn on my arms.

While the camp was one of the toughest workouts I had ever had in my life, I also realized that I could go well beyond what I thought my limits were. I utilized that knowledge for many different aspects in my life. Whether it be pushing through a tough race where I felt absolutely awful or dealing with an extremely difficult situation where I don’t think things will work out, I always remember my time at intensive camp. This memory lets me know that I can get through more than I can think.

Sports Are Lessons For Life

To pinpoint the reason of this post, I want to say that I think participating in sports is much more than a leisure activity we do when we are young. They give us a chance to learn some lessons for our lives. Sports teach discipline, respect, and humility. No, I never got to wrestle or run in the Olympics. That being said, I do have many fond memories from my time as an athlete (that maybe ill share in the future). More than that, I learned a lot about myself from the sports I participated in.

I think kids should participate in sports. One day (if she wants to of course), I hope my daughter participates in sports. Whether that being running like her dad or participating in another sport. I think sports are important for kid to participate in. There are a lot of lessons that can be taught in sports.

I want to end this post with a question for you: is there any lessons from sports that impacted your life? Like always, I would love to hear from you in the comments or on my social media (Facebook, X, Threads).