I really didn’t have so much preparing until after I lost that national final.

– Dan Gable

To say that Dan Gable trained hard is probably one of the biggest understatements someone could ever make.

As a wrestler, Gable was as mean and as tough as they come. Winning wasn’t just some thing, it was the only thing. And he made sure that he put in the work to get it. His record and accolades put him in a class all his own. But when you break down what he did to ensure he would have his hand raised, it makes the things he accomplished that much more obvious. Plenty of people speak about how hard he worked to be the best. But when you ask him, it was much more than just working hard; it was working intelligently.

He didn’t just train his body, he trained his mind along with it.

“You just map things out,” Gable said. I think what made me become a coach, an effective coach, and before that as an effective athlete, was that I mapped things out. As an athlete it was just figuring out and doing things. But I didn’t really understanding so much what I was doing. I was doing it because I wanted to win.”

He pushed himself day in and day out. Going the extra mile and setting goals for himself to make sure that he worked hard and improved every single day. But the value he gained from a loss was something that he truly couldn’t manufacture himself. “I really didn’t have so much preparing until after I lost that national final,” he said. “One major mistakes in my athletic career and that’s actually when I lost in the finals of my senior year in college and that major mistake was, and again I can go back and analyze it as a coach (because I did), but I was really not on track to have that that final match on Saturday night.”

For Gable, it was all about another match that happen that year in February. He set his mind to training for that particular match against Mike Grant of Oklahoma who had won the NCAA title at 145-pounds the year before. It was Grant who Gable was moving up one weight class to face. The thought of that match was his motivating factor in 1970.

“Probably wasn’t real smart,” Gable admitted. “I had that peaking day of Feb 5 or 7 ^th on my calendar from the spring before and I was using my brains to make sure I can perform on that day.”

That’s what he peaked for, and that was his one major mistake.

“For the next five weeks when I should have been getting ready (for NCAA’s) I really wasn’t. I had focused on the wrong date,” said Gable.

But the loss became motivation. He began to map it out better and prepare for the correct dates and set the right goals. “I always made sure I was putting the right dates at the highest level of performance,” he said about his preparation after losing in the NCAA finals his senior year. “That (final) really wasn’t the highest level for peaking for me that year. Maybe I thought it was or thought it would automatically be there, but because I put so much emphasis on a match earlier in the season, which backfired in a way, but motivated me in the off season, it wasn’t my highest level of peaking.”

But that’s not where it stops. As a coach, he made some changes. He became smarter and looked at things differently.

“When I became a coach, I really tried to understand philosophy, tactics and peaking. I had the ability to think more from a standpoint of who I am now,” he admitted. (As a coach) I actually sat down with a pencil and paper and thought about things more for my team.”

The philosophies and the mindset may be different depending on if you’re speaking with Dan Gable the coach or Dan Gable the wrestler, but one thing is for sure, it’s going to hard and it’s going to be tough to outwork him.

Gable’s Morning Training
Run in the gym 18 laps (Increasing pace)
Climb ropes
Chin ups
Push ups
Shadow wrestle (on the gym floor)
“If I really wanted to do more I’d go the 100 yards to the wrestling room and actually hit the mat.” Reaction drills and hype heists.
Knockouts (sprawling)
"I call them knockouts where you throw your legs back . Reason I call them knockouts is because if someone is going to shoot on me and get by my hands then they are going to get knocked out because I’m going to hit them so hard."