What It Takes To Be A Champion

Being strength and conditioning coach you see every day people that say they want to go D1 or be All-American but are lazy. It is very easy to talk the talk but walking the walk is a whole different ball game. One of the reasons I love the field I am in is because within hours of working with an athlete I can determine if they are going to be successful. A great example of this happened today prior to training one of my wrestlers. This particular athlete took 4^th in the section last year as a sophomore. His skills on the mat were phenomenal but he lacked the strength needed to take the section down. I began working with him two weeks ago and will work with him up until the season in November. The work we are doing I will guarantee you he will be the strongest best conditioned athlete in his weight class. As I pulled up to the park today to train this stud I checked my text messages and he sent me a message saying he might be a few minutes late because he is running there! He lives about three miles from the park we were working at. The average 16 year old kid who finds out his ride fell through 15 minutes prior to the session would think of 1000 reasons why not to train, but this kid is different. He ran three miles to the park, we then got into bodyweight movements to finish the warm up and then did some strength work. We finished the workout doing a 15 min conditioner that Kevin Randelmen and Mark Coleman used to do in the prime of there careers, the conditioner doesn’t seem to bad but is BRUTAL. The object is to throw a medicine ball as far as possible using all different throwing techniques. After the ball stops the athlete would then do an animal crawl to the ball and repeat for the entire 15 min. If this doesn’t sound too difficult go out and try it! Randelemen and Coleman used to perform this routine for 30 straight minutes!