Wrestling in the Happy Zone

Last night at practice I worked together an analogy to help our athletes understand the best approach to developing solid offensive attacks in the sport of wrestling. If you don't understand wrestling (or baseball), this blog might be difficult to follow, however, the overall principle holds true everywhere in life.

Youth athletes interested in the sport of baseball often learn how to swing a bat and hit ball by using a special tee that holds the ball in a fixed location. The tee can be adjusted at any height to meet the needs and strengths of the individual swinging the bat. Upon graduating from the tee, athletes enter a form of baseball with a pitcher who throws the ball to them. The ball is no longer in a fixed location, but the pitcher (usually a parent) asks where the hitter wants the ball. He/she is asking where the hitter's sweet spot, power zone, wheel house, etc. is - the place of greatest comfort swinging at a moving ball.

It sounds simple. It is, and I challenged our athletes to consider their own wrestling to be more like tee ball. I continued with the analogy by explaining how professional baseball players have the ability to break down the strike zone in order to choose the pitches they'd like to swing at. To the amateur fan, we are confused when we witness a disciplined major leaguer lay off a pitch that it right down the middle of the plate. To the professional, there is more happening than a ball simply going across home plate. One of the greatest hitters of all-time, Ted Williams, broke the strike zone down into 77 parts and only swung at pitches he knew he could work with in a positive way. He called it the Science of Hitting. Guess what? It works.

Ted Williams understood what he could and couldn't do with each pitch in the strike zone. He looked for pitches in the "Happy Zone" where he could hit .400 or better and resisted swinging at pitches in the low outside corner where he couldn't hit better than .230. He explained, batters need to understand the strike zone because if a pitcher knows he will swing at bad pitches in the strike zone, that's all he'll ever see.

As wrestlers, our application to Ted Williams' Happy Zone is understanding our offensive attacks and developing sound "shot selection." Much like a batters pitch selection, wrestlers must rely on their shot selection. Wrestlers need to know when they can take a shot and score and when they can't. If the shot that is available is a shot that you cannot score from (because of your opponent's strengths or your own shortcomings), it's a shot that you do not take. Shot selection comes down to discipline (like plate discipline for the best hitters in baseball). I wrestled a Russian opponent in 2006 and he literally gave me his left leg (my single leg side). I grabbed it and he threw me for 3 points. Throughout the match, he continually tried to give me his leg, but I resisted even though it was right there and I could hear hundreds of youth wrestling coaches in my head telling me to, "SHOOT!"

As wrestlers, we need to find our wheel house and live there. We need to exercise discipline and stick to our plan. The problem is that many wrestlers don't have a plan or understand their own Happy Zone. They are easily influenced by coaches, parents and teammates who shout from the sidelines, "SHOOT!" Not only is their advice arbitrary and useless, it reveals the amateur side of the fan. The wrestler needs to be the professional. If Ted Williams swung at every pitch that I thought he should have as an amateur fan, he wouldn't be in the Hall of Fame. The bigger picture is the life lesson of staying true to who you are, following your convictions and not conforming to the crowd.

On blogger summarized how to apply Williams' Happy Zone to our life this way:

1. Find what works for you. "Since some players are better high-ball hitters than low-ball hitters, or better outside than in; each batter should work out his own set of percentages.”

2. Stay away from what doesn't work. "Each should learn the strike zone and not swing at bad pitches."

3. The best Happy Zone is the smallest. "Swing at pitches just two inches outside the zone and you will be a .250 hitter."

For all of this to translate into the sport of wrestling, we need to reverse engineer our thinking and understand that "shooting" is not being offensive. Often times it's being irresponsible and careless. The application of this principle comes down to treating our sport like tee ball. Teach to the strength of athletes and seek out skills in the Happy Zone. We teach an abundance of offensive attacks early in a wrestlers career and attempt to prune them as they reach higher levels. I believe it should be the opposite.