Wrestling Blogs - Ben Askren

Dec 25
Happy holidays everybody, I am just getting home to Columbia, MO. The team had a really good practice today and last night getting ready for the Midlands, I am very excited because the midlands is so tough this year, but I really think the Tigers are ready to break out, only a few days and we will know. I also had a really good training camp in Florida, learning how to fight. It has been a lot of fun so far and I have my first fight on Feb.7 right here at home in Columbia, MO and I think that it will be streamed live on purefight.com, but I can't say for sure yet. If you want to here anymore about me hit up benaskren.net. The topic of my blog today will be skin conditions in wrestling. I know you don't like hearing it and I don't really like talking about it, but the fact of the matter is skin conditions are an issue in wrestling. When I went back home to work out with the Arrowhead Warhawks they had some bad skin problems and I thought a lot of it had to do with lack of education. Knowing that my HS coach is very intelligent and involved made me realize that this is a widespread problem. So hopefully the next paragraph will get you informed and keep your team on the mat this season.
Like I said the first thing that I think can be done about skin problems is educate the kid, because there is nothing worse than a kids who spreads staph or herpes to half the team before he realizes he has anything wrong and just thinks he has a strange looking cut. It doesn't take long, maybe 30 minutes to teach kids what things look like and that they need to get off the mat before they spread the problem to their teammates. Also how many times have you seen a kid hide something because they dont want to miss one practice, you have to teach them that one practice isn't a big deal in the larger scheme of things when whatever skin problem they have could really hurt the team.
The second thing you need to do is prevent. To me this means two things cleaning the mats and getting kids to shower properly. As far as cleaning the mats properly it should be everyday either before or after anyone has used the mats. A product we have used a lot this year at Missouri is CSG sport coatings, they do stuff for a lot of sports, but also have a branch directed at wrestling. Their wrestling specific site is http://www.csggrp.com/sas/wrestling.html. After cleaning the mats you have to get kids to shower properly, too many kids are using the shower gels which have limited cleaning power. An example of a good show product is hibiclens, this combined with the CSG sports coatings Sportsaide has kept Missouri cleaner than any year since I have been here.
Lastly it is so important to get guys of the mat when they got something growing on them. Like I said one or two days of practice isn't worth getting the whole team infected. I hope this helps and I hope you have a great season. I also wish for Christmas that all you Flo fans can make it to St. Louis in March and cheer for the Missouri Tigers.