How to train mentally for competitions

Question
Hi Anthony

I have a son of 10 years old.  He is busy training very hard for the South African Wrestling Championship.  I would like to know what is the best way to train for a competition and how I can get him to be mentally ready and positive to be able to take on his opponents and go for gold.

Answer
In general you would want to train harder than the previous day. Meaning if you ran 1 mile in 7:00 mins, try and break at least 6:50 mins. If you did 50 pushups the previous day, do 52 pushups this day etc...

Mentally training is a lot important than the physical aspect. You have to accept the fact that your son will definitely be intimidated, specially against international opponents. It can come from a range of his opponent's height, weight, color or technique. You can see a lot of new things out there.

If your going for the Gold and are capable of winning the gold, it usually puts a lot of stress specially on a 10-year-old kid. Teach your son to meditate for 30 minutes everyday to practice for the real meditation he will have in the tournament. Usually its best to meditate to calm yourself down before a tournament / dual-meet. Slow our heart beat down, you don't want to be an all-out basher out there in the wrestling world.

When meditating, your son must be able to envision himself winning this thing. During weigh-ins, tell your son to look at his opponents in his weight class. Imagine himself wrestling him, taking him down to pin. Imagine his opponent on top of him working for a turn, your son should be able to gracefully defend it. I don't know what style it is but use appropriate situations. The key goal here is for your son to be able to play a live wrestling match in his head in first person perspective.

Condition your son so that he has trained so hard that he knows he will not take anything less than a gold. Be strict on him, kids will NEVER want to win the gold themselves as they are too young to know what they want. Make it clear in his mind that you are spending the trip to South Africa and he doesn't deserve less than a Gold because he WORKED hard to train for his. It would be like slapping you in the face if he didn't. Though this may sound mean, you are just being firm and aggressive. He will not want to disappoint you.