Wrestling Blogs - Steve Costanzo

The below quotation is from one of our great men in the sport of wrestling - Mark Schwab - former UNI All-American.

"No easy points ever: This is a wrestling commandment. At no time in our sport do you ever render easy points to an opponent, be it in practice or competition. You have to slug this out and make your opponent earn, work, and exhaust themselves to get points on you. If you allow this, you’re setting yourself up for future defeats. NEVER put yourself in a position where all you can do is hold on. You become limited. You always want to be able to improve whatever position you’re in. Demanding your opponent work for points makes him expend energy, does a mental number on him, and makes him question his ability to score. This is what you want. To make opponents work for points, if they score at all, requires an attitude. That attitude is one that asserts with fervor, emotion, and focus. When you render easy points, you become soft, limp, and ineffective and you develop hollow spots. So athletes, NEVER NEVER give easy points to anyone under any circumstance. You need a standard to live by that never calls in sick or slips out early. It’s not a sometime thing applied only when you’re feeling good. It’s every time you train and compete. You don’t even have to think about it because it is who you are."