Editor’s Note: February is the month when most high school wrestlers are wrapping up the regular season and focusing on post-season tournaments. Dan Gable, who won 181 straight matches in high school and college before leading the University of Iowa to 15 NCAA championships, spoke to WIN editor Mike Finn about what will help a prep wrestler at a time when it matters most.

            WIN: What should be a wrestler’s and coach’s mind-set be this time of the year?

            GABLE: It kind of depends what you have in that room, who you have to beat and how far you have to go. There are general principles this time of the year and the most important date is the night of the state finals and where do you stand now.

            Many of these principles should have been done before the season started and coaches should have reevaluated as the season went on and made adjustments. Even though the whole season is planned out, you’re constantly making adjustments so that you are peaking at the most important time for any athlete and coach.

            Take Feb. 20 for example, which is the championship night for many states. You work your way back to where you are today. You analyze the areas that you are on track with, not on-track with. Are you OK or not OK? You have to make a few adjustments to your practices and training and style of life based on what team and individual components have shown up to this point.

            You should be ready for a performance right now. Even if a wrestler injures his foot, he’s already built a base in November and December and continued that base with a lot of competitions in January.

            You should be close to top form already. If you are not, that means you are tweaking things and making little adjustments that really are needed for individual cases. But still, a lot of your real hard work is done. A lot of it now is mind games and perfecting some things.

            If you are still fighting weight-loss or a lot of new skills, you may have to deal with them the rest of the season and you’re probably focused more on next season or even two years from now.

            If you have a good system, this time of year really is for honing in on certain things to make sure everyone stays healthy, everyone stays motivated. You don’t want kids thinking about “after-the-season” stuff. You want them to think about what they are still going to accomplish at the end of the year. You want them hungry.

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            WIN: You mentioned that coaches have to use mind games this time of year. What do you mean by that?

            GABLE: When you really believe in a wrestler’s abilities, you don’t have to play mind games. If you don’t totally believe, you have to use mind games and have to be so crafty that wrestlers aren’t figuring them out.

            It’s more like rolling the dice a little bit. Mind games are done to convince somebody of something that may not be there, but gives them more of a chance than normal.

            WIN: Can you give an example of a successful mind game that you used on someone at Iowa? I have to believe that dealing with college wrestlers is no different than high school wrestlers when it comes to convincing them to succeed. For example, there was Jesse Whitmer, who won an NCAA title at 118 pounds in 1997 as a No. 6 seed. How did you help  him?

            GABLE: The plan for Jesse wasn’t any more than building him up, getting him ready, knowing that he was strong, having him win close matches; something he hadn’t been doing. You do what you think is appropriate and you do it right until the end. Even though you haven’t seen it (in the wrestler), that’s your best hope. I knew that Jesse was good enough to beat everybody, but I didn’t know if he could do it back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back.

            WIN: How did you get him to believe in himself?

            GABLE: Jesse Whitmer had kind of a flaw, but I didn’t tell him that. His flaw was the last part of a match, the final minute of the match. If things were going well for Jesse Whitmer, that last minute was a shut-down period when he’d try to coast to victory. If things weren’t going well, he coasted to lose.

            When we came up with the plan for the team, it was important to score bonus points. I didn’t really have it broken down for Jesse. It was for everybody.

            On the first day, Jesse didn’t have any seeded wrestlers and he really got us some bonus points (on two major decisions) when he could have simply won by five points or so.  I knew that Jesse had bought into our message about getting bonus points two weeks before the national tournament. That was when he got up to talk to the team and felt that he could contribute bonus points. In our team meeting after the first day of the tournament, he was a happy kid. But when it came to the quarterfinals, he had a guy (David Morgan of Michigan State) who had beaten him several times.

            So I asked him, “What about tomorrow (and the quarterfinals)?” He looked at me and said in so many words, “You’re asking too much. You don’t expect me to beat a guy whose beaten me three or four times?”

            All of a sudden, I thought about what Jesse had done; something he hadn’t done all year. He bought into the extra points system and he did it in the last part of the match.

            So I asked him, “What did you do today?”

            “I scored the bonus points,” he said.

            “No,” I said. “There were two things you did at least twice against the highest level of competition that I don’t think you thought you could do before. You wrestled tough the whole match.”

            All of a sudden, there was a look on his face … and he got it. What he did that day bumped him up to a new level by showing he could be a competitor the entire time. It also gave him a chance to win the next day, which he did.

            (Whitmer defeated Morgan, 7-4, in the quarterfinals, followed by 10-7 win over No. 2-seed Teague Moore of Oklahoma State in the semis, before beating Illinois’ Lindsay Durlacher, 5-4, in the finals.)

            If you are a good coach and do things right, even though I don’t believe in luck, things can fall in place. You create your own luck. That seemed like it happened a lot with me.

            WIN: You mentioned that Jesse had to get up before the team and verbally state what he was going to do in the national tournament. Should all coaches make their wrestlers, even in high school, stand up and tell their teammates what they expect out of themselves?

            GABLE: It gives (the wrestlers) accountability and sometimes it’s pretty easy to shirk responsibility. It’s easy when no one makes you accountable. When wrestlers say it out of their own mouths, instead of just coaches saying it, it helps the wrestlers move in the direction they really want to go. It puts them in a position that if they don’t do this, it’s like they’re a liar. If you get called for stalling in the last 30 seconds after you told your teammates that would not happen, what do they think? Accountability helps you overcome doubt.

            WIN: On many teams, you have freshmen, who are facing their first postseason. Who is more critical in helping those young guys become believers? Coaches or fellow wrestlers?

            GABLE: The most critical person is the young wrestler himself. He has to believe what he is saying. Age is of no consequence. People who keep saying he’s a freshman or sophomore keep delaying what they need to develop. The quicker you get inside this kid’s head, the better he’s going to be.

            The coach has to preach something that he wants the athletes to do and the athletes have to believe in what the coach says. Once the kid gets it, that means he finally figured out what the coach has already been telling him.

            WIN: There are post-season opponents who wrestlers have either beaten or lost to. What is more of a concern: over confidence or doubt?

            GABLE: Doubt is more of a concern. Overconfidence means you might get caught in a move because you may have done something you shouldn’t have done. But in most cases if you are overconfident, you are going to get through it. But when you doubt, you don’t get much accomplished.

            This time of the year, you coach straight, good, solid wrestling. You don’t wade into areas that you are not familiar with. This time of year, you clean up your wrestling. You clean up your mind.

            WIN: This time of year, all wrestlers and coaches face diversions, whether it’s from family and friends or perhaps the media. How do you deal with this?

            GABLE: It depends on who is the most influential person to each wrestler. Usually it should be your coach. If there is good communication within the system, you get together and come up with one solution. Hopefully by this time, the coach in the room has taken control.

            This is a more disciplined time of the year in all walks of life; not just your wrestling because it carries over. If you are not disciplined in something other than wrestling, perhaps your academic responsibilities, it becomes a distraction. You should be disciplined in your faith, your family, your school, your diet, your hygiene, your injuries, being on time for everything. You shore up your whole life. You should be in your own little  world this time of year.