Ted Williams may rightfully be considered the best hitter to ever pick up a bat. He won the Triple Crown three times and retired with a career batting average of .344. His .406 batting average in the 1941 season is unsurpassed to this day. The Kid, as he came to be known, was a wizard behind the plate.

As a child, he carried a bat with him to school and swung it every chance he got, trying to imagine fastballs and sliders shooting by.  His childhood friend once remarked, “He’d close one eye, then the other, figuring out what he could see from each eye. He did this all the time. He was always figuring things out. I guess it had something to do with hitting. They’d talk later about how great his eyes were.  Well, he worked at it.”¹ He would sit for hours and watch pitchers practicing, until he could read the trajectory with the blink of an eye.  He became so familiar with different pitches that he couldn’t even tell the difference between them when batting. “They all look like they are hanging out in front of the plate on a string,” he would say.

Carl Yastrzemski said of his mentor, “He studied hitting the way a broker studies the stock market.”  The Kid never really did well in school, but no one would deny that he was one hell of a student.

———————

Roger Bannister never won an Olympic medal, but the running world will forever remember this Brit for his extraordinary achievement of being the first to break the four minute mile barrier.

In the middle of the twentieth century, running underwent a few drastic changes.  There were some breakthroughs in interval training and advances in footwear that brought the world record asymptotically closer to four minutes.  Some thought it was impossible for the human body to handle, but Roger Bannister knew better. This wasn’t because he was a senseless dreamer or hopeless optimist, he really knew.

Bannister was a very serious medical student at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School while he was training.  During his residency at St. Mary’s, he used his precious lunch break to sneak off for laps on the track.² For part of his clinical research, he had subjects run on a treadmill with a breathing tube in their mouth and measured the intake and outtake of oxygen until the point of exhaustion.  The patients were literally shot off the back of the treadmill when they failed.  He was his own primary patient − both guinea pig and lab researcher at once.³

He learned firsthand how to properly control his breathing during each anaerobic second of the 5,280 foot race.  He learned that it’s more efficient to run 4 x 60 second quarter mile splits than, say, 62 − 61 − 59 − 58.  And he endlessly practiced pacing himself at 60 seconds flat.  We take for granted all of the physiological and anatomical information we have, but 50 years ago, they knew a lot less.³ Bannister was literally on the cutting edge of new developments coming out.  He approached his goal analytically and used the scientific method to break this unbreakable barrier.

———————

John Smith was the most successful American wrestler to ever grace the international arena.  He won six consecutive world championships and holds two Olympic gold medals.  He was the first American to be voted Master of Technique and Wrestler of the Year by the International Wrestling Federation.  Though Smith was a master of all technique, one move stood above the rest: his low single.

John Smith’s name has become synonymous with the low single leg attack.  What’s amazing is that not only does every young wrestler know this, but the Russians knew this.  The Iranians knew this.  The Cubans knew this.  And that didn’t stop him, he hit it on anyone and everyone.

As a freshman enrolled at Oklahoma State, Smith quickly adapted to the collegiate style, though he did not place at nationals that year.  Disappointed, he trained harder, and made it all the way to the finals in his sophomore season, only to lose to Jim Jordan.  Sick of losing, he asked his coaches for a redshirt year, which was granted.

During this year off, Smith stumbled on the low single and fell in love.  “I was not the first guy to work on a low shot, but mine was very different. Very technical, with numerous finishes and ways to score back points,” he explained. ⁴ Every day he entered the wrestling room with a renewed excitement, wanting to fine tune some minor aspect of his creation.⁵ He tinkered at it like a scientist on the brink of discovering a cure for cancer.⁶ Every day Smith saw progress, but he kept experimenting, determined to create his masterpiece on the mat.  Most of the finishes he was hitting had never been done before so he was treading on unexplored territory.

Shakespeare mastered the English language so thoroughly that he invented new words frequently.  So too did Smith master the wrestling mat.⁷ He came out of his year-long redshirt as a different wrestler.  Like a tornado, he left a trail of wreckage wherever he went.  He went on to win national titles in his final two years of college and even won his first world title after his junior year.  And then five more.

———————

Relevant quotes:
1)  “He’d walk down the street—I can see this—and put his hand along his nose, straight out, like he was looking on two sides of a door,” Les Cassie Jr., teammate and friend from the neighborhood, says. “He’d close one eye, then the other, figuring out what he could see from each eye. He did this all the time.  He was always figuring things out.  I guess it had something to do with hitting.  They’d talk later about how great his eyes were.  Well, he worked at it.”
—Ted Williams, Leigh Montville

2)  When Bannister arrived at the hospital each morning by subway, he was besieged by responsibilities.  He oversaw a ward of forty beds; under the guidance of consultants, he interviewed patients and prescribed treatments.  This clinical training was supported by lectures and postmortem examinations.  Bannister rarely had a chance to sit down.  Every few months he went on a different rotation offering new challenges to manage on little sleep: junior medicine, junior surgery, gynecology, obstetrics, and emergency medicine, among other specialties.  During lunch—his only break in a day making rounds, studying, and writing papers—he hurried from the hospital with his running gear and to the Underground train two stops to Warwick Road Station.  There it was a quick walk to the Paddington Recreation Ground, where he trained throughout the week amid a group of overweight middle-aged men who panted around the track to trim off a few pounds during lunchtime.  He paid his sixpence, changed, and within a few minutes was into his routine of fast laps on the poorly kept black cinder track.  There was no time to waste with stretches and a jog.  He had thirty-five minutes to train before showering, grabbing a bite to eat, and returning to the hospital.
—The Perfect Mile, Neal Bascomb

3)  “Many decades would pass before science showed how fast twitch muscles (those used for speed) operate on anaerobic energy and slow twitch muscles (those used for endurance) operate on aerobic energy, how both can be developed on a cellular level, and how the lungs, heart, blood, and capillaries are adapted into the enhancing of the whole process.  From what Bannister understood—which was much more than most—the body could manage a four-minute mile.  His physiological investigations had led him to this conclusion; with both this research and his experience as a miler, he was able to dissect the way the race needed to be run, not only in terms of training but also in manner and style.  Although he hesitated to admit it, he had learned firsthand the punishment that his body could withstand by using himself as a guinea pig in his experiment.”
—The Perfect Mile, Neal Bascomb

4)  “I was not the first guy to work on a low shot, but mine was very different.  Very technical, with numerous finishes and ways to score back points.  Going to the ankle and knee all stemmed from using motion to attack from a lower level.”  Smith, an education major, was diligent and meticulous.  “I made written notes after all my practices.  I documented in my notes what had worked during practice.  After I started moving my feet, I just began to feel it.  I also paid attention to the European stance, which had been very successful internationally.  It was different from the American stance where you’re bent over at the waist.  When I began working these moves it opened up other ways to score.  I started scoring back points off takedowns.”
—Cowboy Up, Kim Parrish

5)  “As the technique began to develop, workouts took on a new tempo and urgency.  He toiled with the focus and enthusiasm of an inventor in the laboratory on the brink of a new discovery, often losing track of time as he tried out new ideas and nuances.  ‘Physically it was tough, but mentally it was almost effortless.  I wanted to do it.  I knew it would work.  I could not wait to get to the wrestling room every day.  I could not wait to compete with what I had developed.’”
—Cowboy Up, Kim Parrish

6)  http://www.flowrestling.org/videos/play/1028-the-scientist

7)  Smith’s inner world was lit by fire as he continued to focus with the obsession of Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  It was his personal Age of Discovery.  “There was always an end to what I was working for.  And it was not money or fame.  To try to become the best at something is one of the most fulfilling experiences you can have.  After you see the results, it drives you even deeper. I developed a hunger and an excitement as I felt myself making progress.  In one day a person can become totally different when you’re intense as I was that year.  But you have to see the results on the way.  A little bit of success along the way is important.’
—Cowboy Up, Kim Parrish

One of the things I’ve always liked about wrestling is the customary importance of Honor. That may seem rather abstract, but bear with me here. When I was younger, my dad and I went out to watch the NCAAs in Kansas City, Missouri. During the first round, one match caught my eye: top-seeded Iowa heavyweight Steve Mocco faced Scott Coleman of Iowa State.

Mocco is a fellow Blair alum and is known for his rough-and-tumble style of wrestling. He is very explosive for a heavyweight and uses his force liberally. There was an anecdote around the Blair wrestling room that I always liked. Coach Buxton used to have heavyweights from the local area come in to practice with Steve, but he was so brutal that they wouldn’t want to come back anymore. Buxton pulled him aside one day and said, “Steve, it’s like your toys, if you break them, you can’t play with them anymore.” I don’t know if that is a true story, but it illustrates a point: I would not want to cross Steve Mocco.

During this first round match, Steve was winning pretty decisively when he applied an illegal arm-bar. Under the rules, if you commit an illegal move that injures your opponent and he can’t continue wrestling, you automatically lose the match. So not only did the ref award a penalty point against Mocco, but his fate was held hostage by the well-being of the Iowa State wrestler lying on the mat. All he had to do was say, “Ref, I can’t go on any more,” and the match would be his. That would have been a huge deal, considering Mocco was the #1 seed. What happened next had a great impact on me.

After determining that his wrestler was too injured to wrestle, Iowa State coach Bobby Douglas showed his true colors. He had Coleman walk out to the center of the mat and stand on the line until the whistle blew to resume the match. He then instantaneously forfeited to Mocco. Because Coleman couldn’t continue wrestling anyway, he didn’t want to ruin the tournament for the #1 seeded Mocco. In essence, he reforfeited.

I remembered this story tonight while watching the end of a basketball game on television. You know how last minute of a close game is full of misplaced fouls and intentional dives? The players run around on the court playing patty-cake with each other and whining to the ref about bad calls. It just really annoys me that 30 seconds on the clock takes 5 minutes to watch. Some people argue that “it’s just part of the game.” Intentional fouls, hasty time-outs, and over-the-top dramatic spills? That doesn’t sound like the kind of game I’d like to play.

In wrestling, we have calls like stalling and fleeing the mat at the discretion of the ref. If one wrestler takes two injury times, the other gets his choice of position. We have blood time for crying out loud. Anyone who has seen Vision Quest knows you can lose a match by bleeding too much. On top of that, I think our fans play a big role. If one wrestler is stalling too much, he gets booed to oblivion.*  I literally can’t remember the last time I took an injury time out—it’s been years. I guess I would never make it in basketball (for a number of other reasons as well).

What Bobby Douglas did for Steve Mocco that day was pure class. Iowa and Iowa State are big in state rivals and there were team points on the line. Mocco did do an illegal move, and his wrestler was hurt because of it, but he took the high road. Coleman probably would have lost anyway, so why win on a technicality? That’s Honor.

———————

*Anyone who has ever wrestled against Lehigh knows this. In Mass, I’ve heard Lowell fans are rough too, but I’ve never wrestled against them.

Needless to say, I’m pretty disappointed with how my season wound up.  I was one round away from All-American for the second year in a row and it’s frustrating as hell.  I promised myself I wouldn’t complain and try to be positive about it, but it’s hard.  Anyway, here are a few things to share with you.

• Article in the Boston Globe about me today: http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/wellesley/2009/03/wellesleys_peterkin_explodes_a.html.  The author says that I beat Nickerson, which is not true, but it’s a fine article otherwise.  Which brings me to my next point.

• Here is my match against Troy Nickerson in the EIWA finals.  It was a decent match, but I made a few key mistakes.

• This article was featured in our school newspaper a while back about my dog, Brando: http://media.www.dailypennsylvanian.com/media/storage/paper882/news/2008/10/17/News/Mans-Best.Friend.Finds.A.Home.On.Campus-3492579.shtml.  He’s the man, and I can’t wait until the weather gets nice so I can throw the frisbee around with him.

• I will be living and working in New York City this summer, so if you are in the area and want to train, feel free to contact me: rollie.peterkin@gmail.com.

Perspective (n):  the capacity to view things in their true relations or relative importance

Adam Frey wrote a really though-provoking and perception-shattering piece on his blog, here.  I would definitely recommend reading it.  If you don’t know Frey’s story, shame on you.  Here is the Cliff Notes version:

Adam is a wrestler from Cornell who was diagnosed with cancer last year.  After a pretty serious car accident in March, he was taken to the hospital where they administered a routine CAT scan.  When the results came back, they found “three tumors on my lung, liver, and between my kidneys”.  Although this was a terrible twist of fate, he was fortunate to catch it when he did.  Adam gracefully shares his trials and tribulations with the world on his blog.  He is now heading back to school for the spring semester, and does so with immense courage.

“In contrast, I feel almost like an old veteran coming back from a war.  The medical struggle shattered my innocence, my greenness towards the world has been replaced by a blood red, the experiences of cancer, chemo, pain, hardship, and all of those experiences that age someone’s life drastically, even in such a short period of time.  It is two different understandings of two completely different worlds combined in one place.”

If that isn’t perspective, I don’t know what is.

UPDATE: I just heard from the Wellesley coaches, it turns out the school administrators canceled any and all activities at the high school for tomorrow.  This weather sucks (I drove home from Philly last night).

Coach Davis and I rescheduled it for 4:30 on Monday, December 22. It’s at Wellesley High School, in the upper gym. I know high schools have practices and parents have work on Mondays, but I will be there for anyone who can still make it.

Hopefully it’s still a success. I guess if you look at the bright side, the less people that come, the more individual attention you get. Try to spread the word of the cancellation if you can.

Thanks, see you Monday.

—–

The first time I stepped on the mat was at the Wellesley Youth Wrestling Club, run by high school coach, Dave Paltrineri. Dave was a great coach, and he really got me off on the right foot. In sports, it is incredibly important to do things right from the beginning so you do not develop bad habits, and I was lucky to have Dave from Day One. I remember going to the high school matches as a wee little third grader and watching the big kids wrestle. My heroes were the Diamond Twins, Yanni and Dean Diamond. My dad took me to a home match once, and I saw both of them pin their opponents in back-to-back weight classes. That was why I wrestled.

When I reached high school, I was on the team with the youngest Diamond Brother, Greg. You see, all four of the Diamond Brothers wrestled for Wellesley High. There was Peter who was a state champion in 1993. Then came the twins Yanni and Dean, who hold five Division I state titles and four All-State titles between the two of them. Dean was Massachusetts’ first three time All-State champion . When Greg won states his senior year, the record books were shattered. Four brothers, four state champions.

When I got to high school, I was damn proud to wear the Wellesley singlet and represent such a rich tradition. Wellesley wrestling boasted a state champion every year from 1991 to 2006. For a while, I believe we had more All-State champions than any other school in Massachusetts. Recently though, all has not been well in the town of Wellesley. We went through a few coaching changes, and the general interest in the program has fizzled. This was explained to me the other day, when I got a call from one of the parents on the team, Steve Biondolillo.

Steve is an old friend, and was an accomplished wrestler back in the day. I worked extensively with his son David, who is a talented young wrestler on the Wellesley team. So Steve called me and asked if I could come in and work with some of the guys over Christmas Break. “Definitely.” Then he took it a step further, would I be willing to come give a clinic at the high school to raise money for the program? Hell yeah, I loved the idea.

Steve’s call not only stoked my massive ego, but it gave me hope. Most high schools in Massachusetts have embarrassingly small wrestling budgets from what I understand. I hope to repay part of the debt I owe to the sport and the program for making me what I am today. Here is what we worked out:

-We have the WHS basketball gym reserved for Sunday, December 21. The clinic will start at 1:30 pm and will run 90 minutes. Afterwards, I will stick around for a while answering questions (I will be there early too).

-Admission is $10, all proceeds go to Wellesley Wrestling. Our goal is to raise 600 dollars.

-I also threw out an idea (my only contribution to the event): why not make it a sort of alumni day too? We could kill two birds with one stone. I will be inviting Coach Paltrineri, all four Diamond Brothers, and anyone I can contact. See if we can show the world how wrestlers support our own.

So that’s the deal. Come if you want. If not, I hope everyone has a great holiday.

You know that feeling when you’re in the shower and the water is too hot so you turn the knob a little bit, but then it’s too cold? You struggle back and forth with increasingly less torque, but you can never get exactly the right temperature. That’s how I feel all the time.

To me, the season is a never ending process of adjusting and tinkering. I meet minor setbacks on a daily basis and try to overcome them. I make many mistakes and have many flaws, and I try to correct them. Most of all, I try to never stagnate in the recesses of complacency.

A wrestling season is a dynamic organism – it changes and grows – and if you’re not growing, you’re dying. If you have a bad match and you fail to learn from it, it becomes a string of bad matches. If you slip into routine and go through the motions every day, the season moves on without you.

Sometimes you must work harder, other times you need recovery. You will never feel 100%, but it is a constant struggle to find the ideal middle ground. It is almost always elusive and unattainable, and this frustrates some people. I do not mean that you will always be scalding hot or ice cold, but that it is a constant flux. You bounce back and forth, seeking harmony, and in the process you get closer.

You must come to terms with this – there will be hard times, bad days, and flat matches – all you can do is keep pushing and try to steer the course. And if you work hard enough, some day you may be able to find the perfect goddamn temperature in the shower.

Note:  Sorry I haven’t updated in a while, I’ve been very busy with school and wrestling. More to come soon.

As wrestling and school get cranking in full gear here, I have less time to sit and write.  But, like any good teammate, I will not abandon my readers (if there are any).  My main focus right now is that of a wrestler and a student—not a writer.  Henry David Thoreau once famously wrote, “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”  That is what I intend on doing, standing up to live.

Hopefully my results on the mat this year will speak for themselves.  I will do my best effort to keep passing along anything I can, but with less frequency.  I have a strong belief in quality over quantity, and I don’t want to bog readers down with the trivalities of my life (“Today I worked out, it was really intense!!!”).  Keep checking back for updates.

A lot of high school wrestlers ask me this question: What should I be doing in the preseason? In college, our preseason training is very structured, however high schoolers often lack this element. Here are my ideas on the matter; they are by no means the only or the best ideas out there, just some suggestions. In fact, many people will disagree with my methods, and that’s fine—I welcome any and all criticism.

First:

This is the time of the year to reformulate your style and straighten out any kinks in your technique. Let me explain: there are two scenarios, either you worked hard and improved over the summer, or you didn’t. Either way, it’s too late to change that now. If you worked hard and learned a lot of new technique, it is now time to consolidate your new technique and mix it into your repertoire. If you didn’t jump levels over the summer, well then now is the time to clear the cobwebs and try to get your groove back before the season starts.

The best way to do this is to get on the mat and experiment. Starting out, I would recommend finding a worthy practice partner and rolling around—nothing more. A lot of people hit the ground running and go crazy with live wrestling. I would say that it just isn’t worth it; the point is not to get in awesome shape overnight, but to get your feel back. Plus, the risk of injury is high when wrestlers are rusty.

So let’s say over the summer you learned a good finish on a single leg. It doesn’t do you any good to just know the move and say you know it. You must have the feel, timing, and reaction down pat. Feeling it out with a partner is an ideal way to push through the awkward phase of a new move and be ready to hit it when the season rolls around. Not just repetition (though this is very important), but innovation, improvement, and experimentation.

As the weeks pass, more live wrestling and hard drilling is crucial, but always remember to tweak your habits. Try new moves as you wrestle—through this trial and error, your technique will start to click. The best way to do this is to join a club or go to open mats where you will be able to experiment freely and have access to solid coaches to guide you.

Second:

You MUST get in shape during this time of the year. Many view the preseason as just another time to improve your overall conditioning. I see it slightly differently, if only in principal. I think that working out in the preseason should be intended specifically to give you a foundation on which to build during the season. Here is what I mean: if you go into the season out of shape, you will no doubt get whipped into shape by your coach eventually, but it will come at a cost. This cost is that this process will pointlessly wear you out and drain your body.

I’ve seen really good wrestlers come into the season looking good, but by the end they are so fatigued that they crash and burn. So I view the preseason as a time to get in shape for…getting in shape again. Again, nothing too serious at first, just some casual lifts and long distance, slow-paced runs to build this base. As you progress, it’s good to start upping the wattage by maxing in the weight room or doing sprints. One of the most important parts of lifting during this period is that it will help prevent injuries come wrestling season.

With your foundation set firmly, you will be in great position to make the most of the season and pull ahead of competitors quickly. Also, it will give you extra confidence knowing that you are starting out on the right foot.

Finally:

At this point—months before the season—weight should not be a central issue. It is something to be aware of, but not obsessed over. This means eating healthy and exercising, but retaining plenty of energy to focus on wrestling. This is a period measured not by the scale, but by improvements on the mat.

Remember:

Have fun.  Wrestling in the off season can be tedious and routine if you aren’t having fun.