What I have Learned From Dan Gable
- Leaders
are molded from the highest character and are generally the hardest
workers on the team. They’re the first to come to practice and the last
ones to leave. During practice, they lead by example with their mouths
closed, concentrating hard. They understand the team’s goals so they know
what has to be done. They realize that practice is precious preparation
time for the real thing – the game.
- After
Buzzard finished with Gable that night, Dan fell to the mat crying tears
of anger. Right then Gable recalls, “I vowed I wouldn’t ever let anyone
destroy me again. I was going to work at it everyday, so hard that I would
be the toughest guy in the world. By the end of practice, I wanted to be
physically tired, to know that I’d been through a workout. If I wasn’t
tired, I must have cheated somehow, so I stayed a little longer.
- I’m a big believer in starting with high standards and
raising them. We make progress only when we push ourselves to the highest
level. —Dan Gable
- Dan Gable was not a good loser. He also knew that
practice is the cornerstone of expertise. After a lengthy and exhausting
practice, he would order his wrestlers to perform “buddy carries”—hauling
other wrestlers up
- Our conditioning was always different. We never knew how many sprints or how
many of anything we would do. A
player from another school trained with us and asked me how I paced myself
for each lap. I ran every lap as
fast as I could and had never thought of that.
- His players practiced at 4:30 am in the morning so that
they knew they were the only one’s in the nation doing it.
- The Gable minute was not 60 seconds.
- The world is made of two people. Those who knew Coach Gable and those
who wish they did.
- Practice is the cornerstone of expertise because it
multiplies experience.
- Coach Gable’s epic sessions with wrestlers, coaxing them
to ride the exercise bike with layers of sweat clothes beneath plastic
gear, the sweat pouring from them in buckets once the gear was removed.
Every fiber of the wrestlers’ being wanted to get off the bike and get a
drink of water, yet they persisted. By the time they reached the
tournament, they had faced every physical challenge imaginable. They could
dig deep during the exhaustion of a close match in the third period
because they had mastered similar physical adversity day after day in
practice.
- It provides us with far more experience
than we could ever gain during formal performance or competition. Gable’s
wrestlers executed and escaped many more moves than their competitors,
thanks to the rigors of practice.
- A wrestler can develop from
average to good (or great) by putting in just a bit more time and effort
each day. Daily work adds up to a whole lot over time. Five extra minutes
a day doesn't seem like much, but equals close to 31 hours of extra work
when added up for a whole year. Add that up over an high school career,
and that's 124 hours of extra work. Add four years of college, and that's
248 extra hours of work: 248 extra hours that your opponent was not
utilizing.
- A large part of my philosophy
stresses the fact that the only way a coach or athlete will improve is to
set increasingly high standards and then work hard to achieve them.
- Another big part of my
coaching philosophy emphasizes that champions are often, but not always,
the ones who win the matches. In coaching or competing on the mat, the
true champions are the athletes who get the most out of themselves and
others.
- A favorite quote
of mine that best summarizes my philosophy, is by Rafe. He says, "Whatever
you most need in life, the best way for you to get it is to help someone
else
get it who needs it even more than you do." - Gable on Goals: “I’m a big believer in starting with
high standards and raising them. We make progress only when we push
ourselves to the highest level. If we don’t progress, we backslide into
bad habits, laziness and poor attitude."
- Gable on Priorities: “When you finally decide how
successful you really want to be, you’ve got to set priorities. Then, each
and every day, you’ve got to take care of the top ones. The lower ones may
fall behind, but you can’t let the top ones slip. You don’t forget about
the lower ones though because they can add up to hurt you. Just take care
of the top ones first. In 25 years as a head coach and assistant, I think
I might have missed one practice. Why? Because practice is my top
priority. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t accomplish something in my
family life or my profession because those two things are my top
priorities."
- Gable on Hard Work: “The obvious goals were there- State
Champion, NCAA Champion, Olympic Champion. To get there I had to set an
everyday goal which was to push myself to exhaustion or, in other words,
to work so hard in practice that someone would have to carry me off the
mat."
- Gable on Raising your Level of Performance:
"Raising your level of performance requires a proper mentality and
meaning from within. This gives you the ability and drive to work on the
things necessary to go to a higher level. When people ask me how to raise
their level of performance, the first thing I ask is, How important is it
to you?"
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