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The Inner Wrestler by Roger Brigham I credit every success I have had in life to wrestling, the sport that taught me how true the adage is that the road to victory is paved with the cobblestones of failures. Consider that I:
There are two places I know I can always find a sense of well-being: alone in the wilderness, and in combat on a mat. In the wilderness, my body is a mere ripple in the genius of the universe; my mind wanders unfettered. In a match, when every muscle twitch makes me both predator and prey, lifetimes are lived between each heartbeat; eternity becomes the moment. Was I a very good wrestler in my varsity career? No. I was keenly aware I did not have the experience and coaching the sport requires. Tournament wrestling pays a premium to those who put in hours and hours of practice repetitions through the years to hone their skills through live sparring competition. By comparison, academic tests are a snap: anyone with half a brain can down a few cups of caffeine and cram overnight just to carry tidbits of information around for a few hours and spill them onto a piece of paper. In a wrestling match, every opening, every takedown, is an unannounced final exam with sudden-death implications. Academics you can study; wrestling you must live. I remember one winter day during my senior year walking out into the chilly campus after a tough practice. Breathing the cold Ohio air was hard, made harder by the pain in my broken ribcage. The sharp pain gave my thoughts crystalline clarity. I turned to a teammate and said, "I love this sport, but I sure am glad it isn't the only thing that defines me. I don't think I could live with that." In my varsity days, I did not live to wrestle, but wrestling did teach me how to live. All of us are defined by multiple characteristics — our integrity, our desires, our stamina, our compassion, our fortitude, our relationships. Ultimately, our success as human beings, our core quality, is determined not by any single defining characteristic but what we do with their collective yield. Losing all of my college varsity matches was embarrassing. Time and again I would lead on points only to be pinned. Every single time. Never even made it to the third period. Losing, no matter how many times it happened, never became easier. Carrying around that winless record, being asked again and again about it by well-meaning friends who were always hoping for better news, was always painful. But the losses left me humbled, not humiliated. And the unrecorded victories I had were far too valuable for my recorded losses to scare me off. Wrestling woke my sense of "being." My fellow wrestlers — through their respect, acceptance and loyalty — woke my sense of belonging. It never occurred to me to protest when that high school assistant coach dubbed me "Double Zero." I just worked my butt off in practice, learned everything I could, and dominated my opponents. Smaller schools would visit for non-varsity competition with us and I would wrestle 4 or 5 wrestlers in a day. I won more than 30 matches during those meets, collected more than 20 pins, and lost only once. Just before I moved out of state, all of the senior varsity wrestlers on our team, without telling me what they planned, marched into the head coach's office to tell him they thought I was being systematically passed over for varsity challenges. Athletes did not usually challenge their coaches in the Midwest in the late 1960s; their action that day came too late to let me challenge for the spot I felt I had earned, but their actions have meant so much to me through the years that have passed since. Although I had gained a lot of confidence on the mat, I thought the chance to compete again had passed me by until five years later when I read an article in the college paper saying that the only 118 pounder on the team had broken his arm and was finished for the season. I had transferred back to the university just a semester before and had spent the better part of the previous year incapacitated by a neurological ailment. I knew I would be going against wrestlers with years more of practice and training than me, but I thought it would be worth seeing if I still had the fight(er) within me. I quickly discovered that five years lost is a virtual lifetime in wrestling. In high school, victory had come easily, I had earned a chance at the varsity squad ... but was never given it. In college I was handed a spot without having to earn it, but victory proved painfully elusive. The team had lost its first three meets before I joined. In my first match I struggled but fought tough, lasting into the second period before being pinned. The guys were so pumped up by my effort they rallied against that team and won their next three dual meets. I was pinned in all seven of my matches that year (my only victory was a default), but I improved every week. After a three-week drinking binge at the end of the season, I went immediately back into training. I re-learned all of my high school moves and added 15 new ones. I ran every day that summer and lifted weights. In the autumn I was asked to lead team practices on the days the captain was not there. We had six wrestlers in the three lowest weight classes, and I beat them all soundly in our scrimmages. I had put on too much muscle weight to get back down to 118, but I was solidly entrenched at 126. Once it became clear who the three starting wrestlers were going to be in the lowest weight classes, the other guys all took a hike. Everything came undone for my dreams of glory three days before the season started when a freshman teammate broke my sternum with an illegal move. I never was away from the mat long enough after that for my ribs to heal that season. Every time an opponent smacked into me, the muscle spasms in my chest would knock my breath out. I would take a lead in several of my matches, but invariably the results were the same. Eight defeats later, eight pins allowed, my varsity career was done. I moved to Alaska a year after college and began coaching at high schools there. My combination of small size and superior control made it safe for me to spar with even the smallest 98 pounders while still giving guys up to 170 pounds or so a run for their money. I worked with wrestlers on their mechanics, fine-tuning the moves others taught them. Those 9 years of coaching were the most rewarding days of my athletic life, for every day I could see the improvements I helped others make. I had always been so intensely competitive when I wrestled in college and high school that I had never been able to be friends with anyone from another team or even with anyone on my team near my weight. Coaching in Alaska, I saw young wrestlers' friendships intertwined with their rivalries and realized how much of the tapestry of the culture I had missed out on. Returning to the mat decades later, after both of my hips had been surgically replaced, was the toughest thing I ever did in wrestling. I had never wrestled freestyle before and needed to learn an entirely different set of moves and tactics. Moreover, I went from being bigger, quicker, stronger and better conditioned than anyone I ever faced to being the smallest, slowest, weakest and worst conditioned. If I were going to excel — hell, if I were going to survive — I was going to need the support of friends that wrestling offered, and I was going to need every inner wrestler instinct in my soul. Once again, my road to hoped-for victory was cobblestoned with failure. From Day One I set my goal on a single target — win a gold medal in the 2006 Gay Games and then retire -- and I had to accept defeat after defeat to get there. I lost just about every possible way — getting teched, getting pinned, blowing a big lead and losing in overtime, passing out, getting injured — but in every battle I learned something new about my abilities and limitations. When I finally won the gold, the match was not pretty but the victory was earned and the blood well spent. I learned many years ago that we like our friends because in their company we can see the reflection of our own auras. Every facet of a friendship is an intimate mirror of the person we try to be. About a year before the 2006 Games, I finally had the cathartic breakthrough I had been searching for in my quest to rediscover my Inner Wrestler. In one practice I went from worrying about what my opponents' moves were to thinking only in terms of what my abilities were and sensing what opportunities every situation presented. My opponents became reflections of my wrestling soul: when I faced them I discovered the biggest challenges I would face would be within me. For some, that might be a frightening, paralyzing realization. For me, it was the embrace of a long lost friend after years apart. |