Why Is Conditioning Important?

 Being in condition for anything you want to be good at is as important as anything else is but what makes it important? First off having the strength to do something awesome is great but how you keep up that strength in the long run is up to you. The importance is that to get good at something, you condition your body or in other words practice the type of condition you want to achieve whether it’s Juggling Kettlebells, doing Handstands, playing sports or whatever you want to teach your body to withstand that particular subject. Even conditioning your mind is important because the stronger your mind is, the easier it is to find how to condition the body henceforth connecting the Mind/Muscle together.

 It doesn't matter if you’re in a sport, a workout, a meeting or whatever, you want to be as strong and aware when you first started and still have that amount left in the end. It’s called being in the clutch, still having what’s left in the tank for that one final moment or that one moment towards the end where you’re just as strong as you walked in as much as you want to walk out. Being prepared for a situation that still gives you that awareness and realize that you’re not still sticking with the other guy but chances are he’s gotten weaker.

 The type of people who taught conditioning the most were the most successful take John Wooden of NCAA Basketball fame at UCLA, a man who has taken the Bruins to 10 NCAA championships and produced a couple future hall of famers along the way including Bill Walton and Lew Alcindor aka Kareem Abdul Jabaar. He wouldn't let his players play unless their conditioning was top notch. Another would be the great Dan Gable who coached more NCAA champions in the sport of wrestling than any other before or since at the University of Iowa, he even coached a mentor of mine for a couple years by the name of Matt Furey. Gable made it a habit that his wrestlers are able to be ready for anything on the mat and some of them won matches by a landslide and others won or lost when it was time to be in the clutch. Probably one of the most important teachers on conditioning was the late Karl Gotch (1924-2007) who made it the number rule of all because if you’re not in condition and you lose your touch within the first couple minutes you might as well die in the dirt. If you have the right tools you can get in the best condition of your life but it doesn't just start in the muscles, it starts in the mind.

 Being in serious condition makes you tough and makes you want to get better, one of my favorite Pro Wrestlers is Ricky The Dragon Steamboat who had some of the best technical and scientific type matches and quite a number of them would be one hour draws against the likes of Ric Flair, Harley Race and others and I don’t give a damn the matches are fixed and who wins or who loses, to be able to wrestle and entertain a crowd for an hour straight is a feat in an of itself and the closest I can think of that caliber would be Lou Thesz, Verne Gagne, Ric Flair and Harley Race. Not that making this all about wrestling but the fact of the matter is if you want to master something, condition yourself to get to that level. It takes practice, it takes patience and it takes will, if you don’t have the will you won’t find the way.

 Some guys just don’t have the heart to condition them, are they tough enough, maybe not for that particular thing but in some way or another they’ll be in great condition at something. Being able to handle it is up to the person doing it. If you want to be able to handle such training or competition, your mind has to be more conditioned than your body, once you master that than your body will do the rest. One of my favorite stories of being tough to go through something is the Verne Gagne wrestling camps at his barn or office building in Minnesota, you have a number of guys going through the drills doing push-ups, squats, sit-ups, running and sprinting left and right and getting hammered in the ring, in the end there would be only a handful of guys left who made it when the majority quit. Being tough is not about how strong or fast you are, it’s about going that extra mile and even if you have a little left in the tank, you push through till the end. Being in condition is a bit of the same thing just the difference on developing your strengths to keep going and you’re just as strong if not stronger in the end.

 Learn to handle what you can and progress, that’s all you can do and have fun with it. If you’re too serious about conditioning you’re going to miss having a good time with it, enjoy it, challenge yourself and make it work for you.