Jay Jensen has learned a lot from wrestling over the years. Now, as a wrestling coach, he strives to teach his athletes valuable life lessons that help them excel both on the mat and in their personal and professional lives.
Adult life is a competitive place, and nothing prepares you better for it than participating in competitive sports. Honestly, few may be better for teaching valuable life lessons than wrestling. This is obviously a great sport for developing physical strength, but the “wrestler mentality” is the gift that keeps on giving.
Over his years of coaching, Jay Jensen has observed that many of the qualities and traits developed in wrestling translate into the professional world. Wrestlers demonstrate a level of determination and grit seldom seen anywhere else. In short, they essentially refuse to accept failure. Considering the sport itself, this makes perfect sense. Wrestling is an intense one-on-one battle of both strength and wits, with both opponents trying to find weak points in the other and capitalize on them while also demonstrating high levels of respect.
Wrestling teaches adaptability. You may step onto the mat with a certain plan in place for how to defeat the opponent, but if the opponent throws a curveball and does something unexpected, you have to adjust yourself. Sometimes it takes creativity on the fly to do what needs to get done. The victors at wrestling matches and tournaments are the ones who found a way against all odds; this same type of person will also typically find success in other avenues of their life.
Something falling to the wayside in today’s world is mental toughness. What most people may not realize about wrestling is that it’s far from a purely physical sport. In fact, the majority of it is mental. In today’s workforce, it doesn’t really matter how big or strong you are. What matters is your mental drive and capacity to get things done. The best wrestlers know the mental state required to conquer, and this translates into the professional setting later in life. Mental toughness is determination, discipline, persistence, and intelligence.
Wrestling teaches you to quantify your goals and work towards them. Jay Jensen has his athletes spell out their goals before each practice, which keeps them front and center. Success is most easily determined by your ability to reach these goals. “Keeping your eye on the prize” is a good habit to be in in any stage of life. The motivation of wanting to see that goal accomplished is what drives many of us.
Wrestling teaches responsibility. It is important to maintain a certain schedule while also making specific weigh ins for matches. You’ll have coaches along the way to give you pointers and help guide you along, but at the end of the day, it’s only your actions that play a role. Wrestlers know that excuses are unacceptable and are only a way of limiting ourselves. Jay Jensen holds strong to the idea that some of the best life lessons are born from your most challenging moments.