Tom Brands: Iowa Wrestling | Lex Fridman Podcast #245
the following is a conversation with tom brands olympic champion and world champion in freestyle wrestling three-time ncaa wrestling champion at university of iowa and one of the greatest coaches in the history of wrestling leading the university of iowa hawkeyes for 15 years including in 2021 winning the national championships and getting a coach of the year award his third he is known for his intensity focus and mental toughness embodying both as a wrestler and coach the culture and spirit of iowa wrestling we recorded this conversation almost exactly three years ago after i attended the university of iowa versus iowa state wrestling meet in the historic carver hawkeye arena tom graciously invited me to his home where his family a couple of friends and me spent several hours chatting about wrestling in life we recorded this brief podcast conversation that evening and i wasn't sure where how or whether we'll publish it but returning to it now three years later i realized just how meaningful that evening was for me and even though i was nervous didn't even put on my jacket it's a moment i would love to share with others the mix of intensity and heartfelt kindness from tom and his family made me want to stay in iowa forever i think i will return there soon enough because of the amazing people there and because i was still in many ways the heart of the indomitable spirit of american wrestling a sport i love and to which i'm deeply grateful for humbling me early in life and helping me and many others build character through hard work this is the lex friedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now here's my conversation with tom brands what's the best motivator for you or for your athletes hatred of losing or love of winning for me personally it was definitely the hatred of losing i was not a guy that was about pageantry i was not a guy that was about the parade when i wrestled in atlanta i ran in a three-cylinder geo with my wife drove home and mowed the lawn because it hadn't been moaned for a month and i remember one of our neighbors driving by and they were like they did a double take like well that's the i thought he was in atlanta well i was in atlanta yesterday and just sat on the stand and got a gold medal put around my neck that's how i was that doesn't mean that it was the right approach or the wrong approach it's just what worked for me but when you were a kid you and terry you dreamed about winning that olympic gold yeah it's all winning then there is the the the lure of winning but what drives you is that um you know as you move forward there's just no reason that you have to settle for anything but being the best and if if it just it would get to you to the point where that's not going to happen to me again so what the thing that keeps you up at night is the the losses and that's not that's not going to happen to me again that's the thought that keeps you up at night that's the thought that drives you in your training that's why you do you know nine ropes when gable says do three ropes and bunny push-ups and you're out of here and you do nine or you do them until you can't do any more and it's a very rare ingredient the older i get the more rare i find it is the ingredient of lost feeding feeding that the drive of hard training maybe that because everybody's so worried about the negative whatever and you're putting too much pressure on yourself so maybe that but what i meant was is when a coach says okay finish with four ropes and you know bunny push-ups and four-way neck you know i would do 12 or 10. that's rare it's no longer about what the coach says it's your own demons that you're trying to exercise out what's the few losses you've had in your life are all of them just melt together or is there something that stands out in your mind i'm i'm guy that remembers my career that well i know that i am judged on a very small portion of my life and that's minutes of wrestling matches you know a lot a lot of winning but there's some losing in there too and you know people think they know you because of that and they think they know you because they see you in a press conference but um you know to go back to the original question you know i don't know how to answer that so there's no losses that just that eat at you still there's opponents that i have learned a great deal from i mean my loss to john smith in 1991 us open was something that i learned a lot about i learned a lot about positioning i learned a lot about the importance of parterre um you know in a certain kind of crazy way i learned that i could go with the best guy in the world even though it was 14 to 4. and this is when tech falls were 15 or 12 points so i didn't get tech fault and i wasn't that wasn't a badge of honor for me but i knew i could go with him because it was one point take downs i scored four takedowns on him and i learned that i had to move my feet and i learned what it meant to move your feet constantly and and there's no break john smith is a very very intense competitor that people know that now six-time world olympic champion and i felt that firsthand but i did not go in there um taking a back seat even though the score um was very lopsided but you knew you could stand with the best of the world i knew that i this is what this is about and you know what you move your feet and you don't give up a lace that's so damn tight that it you can't you know feel your calf muscle you know and i got to get ready for the consolation side of the bracket because i believe that was in the semis you know you know you just learn from that and it was it was better than learning from you know a win over a second ranked senior level guy when you're a junior in college you know you rest on the best on a stage so if you look back you probably spent tens of thousands of hours on the mat spilled sweat blood even tears maybe maybe a few times so technically or philosophically how would you do any of those hours differently just looking back at the tens of thousands of hours i would be more probably in my older age i probably would have been more relaxed in my training and probably wouldn't win another cycle if i could do it over again in 96 i really thought that when gable retired that i would be the next guy in line and i was wrong and that was immature of me in terms of the coach in terms of the coach yes and i knew that gable was close i mean i didn't know when but it just so happens you know in 97 was his record-breaking year and then he retired but i didn't know how close he was but i knew that he had you know he went down with a bad hip injury and and so you know you're just you're you're not gonna so what is what what is a relaxed tom brands looks like you're saying you would you would have been a little more relaxed more like where you know what i was pretty dang good and i was getting better every day but maybe do it a little bit different a little bit smarter and terry actually did that going through 2000. he had to do it and he would have been in in the you know the funny farm let alone the you know the the physical farm whatever you want to say mentally and physically beat up but he had to learn to less is more type approach and how it came around was is you know you work hard at feeling good you work hard in your recovery so even when you're not wrestling hard in that wrestling room and looking for the toughest partner to go you're still working hard in your recovery and massage could be that stretching could be that um thing things like that that are more fluffy and that's something you weren't as good at never never um there's not a place for it with young people because in my opinion there's so much development to have happen i mean when when you need to learn wrestling you need to be wrestling and as you get older um you your body won't do it anymore and so to learn wrestling it's more of a probably a relaxed approach so if you have to choose between two athletes who would dominate competition one who drills 100 000 reps of a specific takedown specific technique or one that spends that time live wrestling both um it's the same and i like to live wrestling i was always wanting to live wrestle bring the warm-up into the live wrestle let's go but where i got really really good was a repetition and i was disciplined enough to know that the things that you hate to do in this sport are the things that make you the very best and that is a rare ingredient as i've gotten older and you spend a lot of time communicating that to younger athletes so the thing if you feel yourself hating something that's probably a thing you should be doing yes as a matter of fact i had a strength coach when i was really young he was just a freaking guy that would we wore white like he was almost like a nurse nurse's clothes he wore all white from head to toe and he was in cheyenne wyoming and his first name was walt and he taught terry and i to hate the bar away from you on that last rep when you're dead and whether it's a curl you hate it up and then you do the negative and you hate it down and you hate that bench up and you hate it you look at the bar and you hate it away from you so you know i learned and that i was young i was young and uh i remember being born my mom's sister lived out there and we were dropped off to stay out there with our cousins and i was born a little bit and they always treated us really good but this was like the the single most um bright spot in a weightlifting like enlightenment even though i lifted weights but i never knew the psychology behind lifting weights it's just to look good and so you can flex and look in the mirror or is it for performance and this guy was about performance and you said repetition do you mean technique i'm talking repetition technique technique technique drill drill drill hit hit hit drive finish hit hit hit drive finish so you believe in that you believe i believe in that wholeheartedly so i mean i believe that you have to do it on your own i don't believe in the coach taking you to the promised land so in the guys today or in yourself how often do you see people that grow the belief of doing ten thousand twenty thousand reps i think it's rare i think it's very rare and i think it's especially rare i mean you can talk about that as a coach but it's especially rare to bring a guy to that understanding but you never stop trying you're always trying to reach them i mean we didn't have a good performance out there tonight but you know what you don't stop communicating and there's a lot of programs out there that put their head down when things aren't going their way and then as things start going their way then they rise with the tide there was no difference in the demeanor that that of our corner and we talk about that's a philosophy and so you're reaching your guys that way um so go back to your point or your question you know do you believe in the in the 10 000 reps and yes i do and how do you inspire people to do that so well you communicate by example but communication but i mean that's a in my experience what i've seen uh communicating the value of repetition and drilling is a hard thing to communicate it's hard and it's very rare to have somebody that goes in there and will do it on their own do you have young guys that step up and do that we do and it's rare and the guys that do it on their own and have done it on their own are the guys that are in that lineup and and doing well um the other thing is is that when you talk about uh getting to that next level um a lot of times it's you know what held you back was i did everything the coach asked of me and nothing more right i mean you could be a great guy for a for an a for a coach as an athlete and you did everything that coach asked but you did nothing more so you're really looking for the guys that go way beyond what the coaches we don't want guys that are looking at their watch running out of the room when practice is over we want guys that know what they have to get done and they might leave early but they're not looking at their watch they might be done early they might be we might be on a whole different path and this guy just excuses himself i'm all about that we are not we are not autocrats there's an internal engine in there is that something you're born with or is that something you can develop i think you are born with it you develop it also and i think that there has to be comfort and then go back to communication that young people are comfortable enough to communicate that i need to take the day off so what do you mean by communication differently just let exactly so letting letting athletes uh be part of their own development communication to me is is is letting them know what their what they need to do to get themselves in contention to be the starting quarterback and then to give them boosts and compliments when they earn them and i don't have time to waste with um with lies and cheating and when i say cheating i'm talking about when they cheat themselves and so those become very direct conversations and the conversation starts like this i don't have time to waste it neither do you and so why are we wasting our time and here's what i mean by that we're having a conversation about you know your accountability if you look in the mirror and you're accountable then we are we aren't taking the time to go through this we're already on our way to solving the problem problem can't be solved without that understanding and that's has to do with symptoms that you see in the wrestling room there's something where the father is not doing with mental emotional spiritual physical everything everything that you know about you know i had a boss and our athletic director is a great athletic director and he gives us everything we need to be successful but i had a boss his name was fred mims and i didn't think anybody could be better than him and then all of a sudden this gene taylor guy came in and i didn't and then he was pretty doggone good too and he actually you know was just like fred and maybe even a little bit more current and then he ended up taking a job at kansas state where he's the athletic director now and and then this this lady barbara burke comes in and i didn't think anybody could be better than gene taylor or fred mims and this barbara burke she's better than both of them and the reason why is because she's a problem solver she doesn't waste time she's direct and she's a problem solver and that's what we need you need problem solvers so on the flip side of problems and technique and repetition here's a a thing called toughness mental toughness something that maybe you or maybe even iowa in general is a little bit known for so how do you train mental toughness as a coach you train metal toughness by putting them in situations that they're willing to go through but don't think they can make it and then they go through it and then all of a sudden those marries are down does that have to do with physical usually exhaustion the reps on the ropes it has to do with that and it has to do with uh understanding why we're doing it and sometimes understanding why we're doing it might not come for months but there's blind faith and we have a heavyweight in the room right now this this young guy that he's like that he doesn't necessarily understand it he asks a lot of questions but he does it and he's been here four months now four and a half months now and he's getting better every day so mental toughness too is a matter of repetition so that's mental toughness it's a matter of repetition and having an open mind and being extremely accountable and and not only accountable that when you maybe um when something doesn't go your way that you look in the mirror and own it but accountable to the point of view that you know what i gotta get tough in this situation right here right now and this is what's gonna make or break me and i talked about my own career being defined by you know a couple of minutes on the mat but that's when you're gonna be defined that's how you're gonna be defined that's okay so people are going to talk about you so you might as well have them talking about how dog untouched you are what about we live in a world now i've often in my own work i hear about this concept of work-life balance or over-training so you've been one of the hardest workers ever on the mat you've coached some of the hardest workers ever do you think it's possible to over train train too much how big of a concern i think peaking and burnout are frames of mind or burnout as a is a like you let things probably get to the point where you could have arrested them with a good frame of mind but peaking is a frame of mind and you know you have to know be able to read and that's a lot of it and the individual athlete also has to know that it's a frame of mind and so when you have a coach that's reading that the right way and you have an athlete that is knowing that it when zero hour comes that you're gonna be ready to go um and knowing that there's light at the end of the tunnel if you feel like you're burning that candle at both ends lights coming into the at the end of the tunnel i mean you're good to go so you think about gable and that whole dream of being carried off the mat because you worked so hard again do you think it's possible to overtrain so you said it's a it's mental i do think it's possible to overtrain if you have a lot of distractions and if you're looking at your watch running out of the room then yeah you're gonna in that frame of mind isn't gonna lend itself to excellency and the thing is is we we have to accomplish what we need to get accomplished and get better every day you can't kind of accomplish what you need in companies you have to accomplish it and when when you're in that mindset then the clock is irrelevant there's no place for a clock in the wrestling room and maybe a clock that times a match but it may be a clock if you know we're at student athletes here but that's why we encourage our you know when you schedule your classes that you don't have a class that comes right up to you know practice time or starts as a night class and it starts at 5 30. you know go to get the 6 30 class or the 7 o'clock so you leave it all behind your heart your passion is completely there's no when you walk in that wrestling room there's no distractions and it's never eternal the only thing that's eternal is death you know there's nothing sometimes guys come in there and they wig out oh it's an hour and 25 minutes and or an hour and 45 minutes oh yeah you have to be willing to go as long as it takes there's no clock there's no clock again wrestlers are some of the hardest some of the toughest people in all sports but weight cutting often breaks people so what's your thought on weight cutting both nutrition wise mental wise how do you approach and think of it as a coach in your own career too it's a lot of discipline and it's a lot of discipline during a very uncomfortable time period that really doesn't last that long when it feels like it lasts long and it's painful and but once you shrink your body down and if you're hydrated you'll get through it if you're a little hungry but you're eating but you're hydrated once you break that sweat your energy depletion goes away that's a fact i've practiced that you come in and you're yawning and you're you know you're starting to shrink your body down and it's that time of year where hey i got to get my body shrunk down and you're dehydrated you are dead in the water but if you're hungry and hydrated when you break that sweat people gotten better with that over the years over the past few days i think that coaches science is better i think that coaches communicate it i think they always have i think the bottom line is is having the energy to implement that and taking a guide by the hand when he doesn't understand and he's new in your program and he's essential and or he's unwilling to and not discipline enough because when you think by the hand enough they will learn that discipline this is an important aspect of wrestling buddy you know what i'm saying so you know it's not just go and show up for the match i mean it's not about just making weight either you got to be able to make weight that's part of the warm-up that's part of the process getting ready to wrestle the whole thing it's a lifestyle yeah when did you first start believing you're going to win olympic gold i don't know i mean i found out i got really addicted to wrestling really really fast started late but looking back at my life um wrestled my whole life with my twin brother and when terry and i would fight it was wrestling and it was to mame and so if if you were if you're if so if you're trying to maim me i better be tough because if i roll over and expect you to scratch my belly when you're trying to maim me i won't lose my head and tom and terry brands there was no alpha male and when it was on it was on for real what do you mean there's no alpha male there's both a lot of twins there's a dominant twin oh a lot of them very few times is there a situation where you're gonna i'm gonna win every time and everything and then he's thinking the same exact way and terry used to describe it like when we just get interviewed a lot about our careers um like it'd be like you grabbing a steering wheel and me grabbing a steering wheel and fighting and that's what it was like when you would wrestle him or fight him and so i had that benefit so when did i know well i got addicted to wrestling really really fast in fifth grade and started to research it and i don't know why and talked about the olympics and um put it in my head and a member said something about being an olympic champion in fifth grade and somebody made fun of me and i got into fighting the playground and i remember um getting pulled in getting in trouble for that and the people that got me in trouble for that were smart enough to not rake me over the coals but they researched or they actually found out what the fight was about and i was distraught i was i was really emotional like crying or whatever you want to say you don't want to admit that too many times but it wasn't because i got beat up or got my nose blood he never got punched in the face or broke my arm or there was any pain it was because they stomped on my dream and they doubted me and so i fought for that and you know that was a lesson there's going to be a lot of doubters and one thing we talk about as a staff is our staff has to be lockstep in that hallway in our offices and when you deviate outside of that that is heresy so everybody has to be on board confident that you're going to be number one when we go forward and we go put our public foot forward there is a decision we are unified and there is no backbiting and we have great people right now we hadn't had that before we've had the tractors in our hawkeye wrestling club we've had guys that would go out and get rolled up in ankle laces and not care in our club and we got brandon sorenson who got rolled up by james green last night but i'll tell you what i don't i don't have a problem with that you know why because i know it means a lot to him he didn't roll over he didn't quit because he was on the consolation side of a bracket and so when you have that and then you have you know if there's a disagreement it's behind closed doors and then you're moving forward and when you have people that when they're meeting your fans and your supporters you know they're talking the right way with the right message and anything that's caddy wonkas to that you got to be careful there you got to be careful there so that in terms of affirmations in terms of really believing as a team as an individual believing that you're the best in the world did did you i'm sure you had detractors you had people that continued after fifth grade and that's probably where my hatred of losing trump's my love for winning because i wanted to shove it up their rear end bad yeah and the thing is is we maintain a high level and there's very few programs so oklahoma state ohio state now penn state i mean there's four programs that try to win a national title every year and that's it and these these other teams they get up and they got a good team and they get up and they get going and then when when things don't go well okay we're gonna do it next year or this is a down year we're gonna we're gonna get right we're three years out so no matter what you're fighting for first we we do and we haven't won and now you say well we've been one in eight years well you're right we haven't but look at our results are better better than anybody out there and it's me besides penn state and it's because of our mentality and because we have great people ryan morningstar bobby tell from terry brands our medical team even our strength coach quinn holland we're all on the same page and when i send something i hit it immediately i don't have time to waste there will not be an ascension in that hallway everybody's in uh together yeah 1996 olympic games in atlanta can you take me through the day when you're going for the 62kg what did you eat drink what did you think oh it really doesn't matter um i have a routine that you know i had a routine as a competitor that i could run through right now um it was a lot of self-talk very very positive self-talk visualization yes visualization self-talk and and that's how i i was able to relax and getting ready for matches my whole life learned that very early age at a camp in a developmental camp at a young age terry united and i can tell you what i ate and i can tell you what i did to relax and it doesn't matter what you have to do is you have to find that piece and i just know that when i was getting ready for the finals match i had gone back to my room i had my relaxed material you know and i was able to relax because i prepared for it uh hopefully i'm right on this but just looking at the insane bracket you had to go through you had to beat just to get to the faunas to be three world champions eventually world champ i mean they've and you know what i don't talk about that and nobody else does either but everybody talks about in their own career so now you're making my head big but yeah i had a road i had a road you're right that is the hardest bracket i've seen so i've talked to a lot of olympic champions this is the hardest bracket i've seen of any champion so uh maybe i'm confused on this but it seemed like a really tough day for you did you have did you know the bracket ahead of time did you know you faced you you see the draw and it's a two-day tournament so psychology comes into it as much as physical shape um you know because there's those you gotta sleep you know the night before after the weigh-in then you gotta sleep again that next night after your semi-final match is gonna be in the morning you know and then you have to go back and rest cause your final matches and until whatever time it was and so all this relaxation and all that stuff that you just talked about that visualization and self-talk that's what helps it's your routine and was there any doubt any fear any anything there the fear is the type of fear and i just talked about this to one of my athletes today jack dempsey talked about fear and the fear of losing is what motivated him to try to take his opponent's head off he was a boxer and that's okay so fear of competition fear of screwing up fear of oh i don't feel good no no but that little fear that you know what there's somebody out there that thinks that you know what they they're gonna they're gonna revel in my they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna eat it up in my misery they're gonna love they're gonna be thriving because i fail and and i'm not gonna let that happen your identical twin brother terry you've been adam like you said your whole life and you're both some of the greatest wrestlers of all time you won the gold medal he won the bronze medal you've mentioned you know all that really matters is the six minutes or you know just a few minutes sometimes a few seconds to find your whole career so how do you think about that thin line the tragic line at the olympic level between winning and losing i think you come to peace that in the end when it's over that you did the best you could and that's certainly the case with terry um he has a career credentials are better than mine internationally you know he won two world championships i won one and he won olympic bronze medal and um you know i won olympic gold medal but i only won one and the thing is is that's not what's important anyway what's important is is that when it's all over you know how do you look back on it and you're kind of like well you just said that you made sure that you weren't going to leave anything undone but you know what there were tournaments where i did leave things undone and so how do you come back from that well terry never came back from 2000 because he retired well you know what you duplicate and exceed when you're communicating to these young athletes and because of that experience that makes terry a better coach because of you know 1995 that makes me a better coach you know realizing that there are certain things that unraveled in that year that i could have controlled looking back on it and when you have that perspective you can communicate so what control is there can you control everything how big of a role is luck control how you react to an injury control that so you can't you don't have any control over it it's over you know whatever and whatever happened but relax and you learn to deal with injuries better because of that you have that experience that you let this thing maybe get the best of you and that's just an example and you know terry put a lot of demons to rest with that bronze medal so becoming an olympic medalist a few demons could relax well a little he will never admit that and he probably is truthful and i should i'm speaking for him but he is truthful when he says that but if if i look at it and bronze sucks um but if i look at it he did put some demons in rest and i'm proud of him for it there's something there that is a consolation in the fact that he won the consolation medal the consolation medal sucks but there is a consolation that he won the consolation that's a tough medal to win by the way yeah but do you see the the shakespearean tragedy of it all that uh the line between winning and losing so you'd often say that you know winning is everything but it feels like especially at the olympic level or you talk about ncaa finals or that tournament you know a a split second miss move can result in a loss where you dominated all the way up to there you that's where your psychology comes in and that's where the repetition and all of the self-talk and visualization and the physical shape and everything comes together and so that doesn't happen and tonight you we got beat twice actually three times and we out wrestled those we we lost three matches and we out wrestled the guy for six minutes and thirty seconds or one one match went to overtime and if our guys can move forward with the right perspective i'm confident that they'll be better i'll tell you what i'd take our guy over their guy any day any day because our guys get up for every match and now we got a lot to work on right a lot to work on but you know what i can say all that and i'll take our guy and blah blah blah but what are they going to do tonight in their meal how are they going what are they going to do tonight and their rest what are they going to do tomorrow in their recovery on their own necessarily what are they going to do monday great wrestlers can use their imagination with a win that they're not satisfied with and go forward as if it was a loss but it's still easier to go forward with that win but they can they don't just oh i want i'm fine it goes on but then when they lose the exact same way that they could have lost before then they go off the deep end and then that's when they're going to make the change in their life and we talked to we talked about that to our team tonight and the the mature rare ingredient is is guys that can get better even with success like it was a loss without beating themselves up that's complicated it is it's a balance you often talk about iowa's focus on creating individual champions like spencer lee can you explain the philosophy of focusing on individuals versus the team i think that we need to put them both together and the individual impacts the team and you know we haven't done that since 2010 and we need to do a better job of putting 10 weight classes out there that contribute to the team and if it's not ten then it's nine and if it's not nine it can't be four you know and that takes a lot of pride and it takes a lot of um you know where the coach is on top of it and you know you're not just working on the easy things the glaring things you're working on everything what do you mean by everything so the like there's just some you know there's ideas that um when you're a coach uh that aren't they're beneath the surface and you've got to find them and so when communication comes in yeah but you're talking about yeah we got to move forward what does that mean well i know what that means but how many how many guys really know what that means in their program you know there's so many levels of that you've said before that winning is everything uh and that means people lose most people lose you know there's there's really in whatever the context is only one winner in many parts of our world today outside of wrestling that concept the brutal honesty of that is uncomfortable for people so how do you think about this very philosophical difficult concept of you know they're only being one winner that winning is everything this kind of really painful idea i don't think that that's a bad thing to have that mentality i mean i think a kudukov i remember a story i read about him he comes to mind um you know sargosh i remember when he lost in london and i remember the look on his face and those are some of the greatest wrestlers in the history of the sport freestyle wrestling and um you know what it's what works for you and you you can talk about being at peace with your results and and that the approach is in the journey is what it's about but um and that's great and that relaxes some champions and that makes some champions really really tick um but not everybody so it's okay it's okay and if that wigs you out that that really makes you uptight then then then go the other route you have to find what works for you that takes a lot of work if you're lazy forget it forget it so you and terry but in general how do you find the line between extremely physical extreme physical wrestling and rough wrestling or angry wrestling so to which degree has anger whether it's in your wrestling room these days or in your own career entered wrestling do you see it as a tool that can be used in the wrestling match i think there's a balance or not even a male there's a line that you go up to and you can't cross it sportsmanship is everything you can get dinged for points you can get thrown out of tournaments there's rules with um flagrant misconduct where you're kicked out of the match other team gets the points and then you have to sit the next meet so it's very serious the ncaa sends a message a very serious message about sportsmanship and so we talk about that the other thing with wrestling is there's rules in wrestling these guys that are tough guys outside of the rules that's that's what you want in your opponent that means they're frustrated you got to be you got to be a tough guy inside the rules of the sport that's that's more honorable than cold cocking somebody and knocking them out so yeah anger doesn't mean breaking the rules but i mean you know you a lot of people know you just watching you as a coach there's quite a bit of passion there well come and do what you're doing tonight i mean break bread with me in my kitchen and see how big of a jackass i am now you're a pretty nice guy well i'm not asking for that necessarily but thanks i'm saying you know what you you as a coach i mean come okay come spend a month in our program and you'll see really what kind of what kind of people we are and there's a stigma out there because they are very threatened by our program there's nobody else that threatens the sport of wrestling like we do and that's the truth there's a legend to iowa wrestling there's uh it's one of the most intimidating there's a legend to john smith it's the same thing but they can't up for john smith they get up for oklahoma state they get up for penn state my question is okay i'll answer it this way i'll give you i'll give you an example in my coaching career i coached at virginia tech for 22 months we recruited the number one recruiting class we got the administration to change 100 180 how they looked at wrestling here's the thing and because of how serious we were and because we weren't idiots we were able to do that with our administration but my point is this we tried to win we tried to win even at virginia tech it wasn't a stepping stone for me it ended up being one quickly and looking back on it i was a fool to think that i'd be there for 20 years but you believed you would be i did yeah i did i did so do you remember a time that you really pushed yourself to your limits so gable talks about having to be carried off the mat have you really found that level i said something about that too in a book and i think i was misquoted one time um and actually it was gabo's quote i was trying to make the point that gable's quote was like this and you know they weren't making it like it was my own ones i think it was a first wrestling tough book but it's good it's a good book but the story is gables and i don't know if there's anybody that has done that besides him and i think that's a very rare quality um but i've definitely been in that nirvana level of you know either you you could go all day long and it doesn't you have to you have to shoot me to stop me yeah but there's a balance because you're not going hard with and holding your breath it's not it's a relaxed and like you've got a guy cornered and who's most dangerous well the guy that's cornered and so that's where you relax i'm not bum rushing him i'm relaxed i'm still moving fake and very fluid guy falls down on his face i run around behind him that's offense you don't have to just grunt to the leg and call that offense offense is a in and out smooth now you sound like a russian wrestler yeah well that's they're the best in a certain light looking at the history of wrestling wrestling is much bigger than folk style freestyle greco it's it's one of the oldest forms of combat period there's been cave drawings 15 000 years ago do you ever see so you're you're uh one of the great coaches of all time you're not focusing a particular rule style right now but do you ever see wrestling as bigger than all of this you know as as uh one of the pure combats i do and we're raising 20 million dollars for a facility to make it the best facility on the planet we have a vision to build the best facility on planet earth and put the best wrestlers in it and that is bigger than wrestling it's for the university of iowa and our donors are doing it for the university of iowa but it is about the value of wrestling to me also there is so much value to wrestling blind blind people don't play football they wrestle blind people don't play basketball i mean maybe they do but it'd be very difficult they can wrestle wrestling is a feel sport yeah there's no ball there's nothing it's just two guys or two girls and that's it that's right and you can i mean i'm not going to say you can't because somebody will get a hold of this and i'll get an email or a letter that says you said blind people can't play baseball and blah blah i'm just saying that blind people can wrestle very effectively yes i've wrestled with with my eyes shut i mean was honest about it too and it was i was effective so why why was i able to be effective because wrestling is it isn't is a sport that you you can overcome a lot your demons that you're overcoming they're not limited with whether i'm blind or not the demons that are overcoming are inside you you have to overcome those demons from within so what's the future of iowa wrestling look like with this facility and this momentum you have now and this great group of guys you have now we have a good young group of guys and um you know there is a lot of buzz in the program and probably hasn't been this much buzz for quite some time and our job is to you know be relaxed and be focused and not get caught up in the buzz but we have to put it together and we have a catalyst spencer lee but he's gonna have to he's gonna have to get better and we have some other catalysts as well that are um you know gonna help us in the future um but they gotta get better and so all this stuff about independence and accountability and you know being able to get better every day under duress and not knowing that you're getting better but you are you know you know what that you know what i mean by that like the great thing about gable was wrestling for him was is you were getting better and you didn't know you were getting better well yeah just like you said uh grow from success so even you you never allow yourself to think that you're that you're you're getting good all of a sudden you do something in the practice room that you've been working on and all of a sudden you hit it it's like it was automatic yeah and then that you know become yeah that multiplies success and so if i may say so you're a bit of a man of the bible wha what's where do you go what do you go to the bible for your faith strength love paper same things they talked about things that you can't control you turn them over so the biggest thing for me is i gotta turn over the things that i can't control turn them over to that power and i'm gonna be a lot better off and that's the reason why i'm not in the funny farm because it's very competitive to me yeah it's very serious that we we know that these young wrestlers come to school here to be the best that they can be and to accomplish goals that like me when i was young they've set out to accomplish and they chose iowa to do that so we have to deliver and because of that peace with god you know it's pure it's a pure motivation it's a pure um platform it's not it's not doing this for my ego we're not corrupt people we're not liars and cheaters and so often uh that gets in the way of a decent person yeah first and foremost you're a good person and god helps you be that yeah and we're serious about wrestling uh so a couple more questions what's the role of family in wrestling you mentioned your wife who i read uh turned you down when you asked her for a phone number said it's in the phone book that's pretty smooth her story of that is that she didn't want me to have to remember the number and i say at this point and i say there's no way and i remember it very clearly like hey it's in the phone book and i was like okay she's blowing me off that's okay but luckily anyway here's the thing with family i mean we we have great people in our program we have great parents we have a culture of parents that that's part of the buzz and this class that you see wrestling right now that's been here a year now lee mirin costello warner and then lugo was a transfer and i'm forgetting somebody and i don't want to forget anybody but um these parents are phenomenal and that's a different parental culture so the camera's dad is the same and and so there's a lot of good there and that that's a big that's a big a big movement because how we talk to parents we don't talk to parents to get along with them we talk to parents to help them understand you know where we're at with their sons and when you can have a direct conversation with a parent who is helping his son or her son the mom helping her son to be accountable and to own it then you can get a lot accomplished and that's what we've been able to do and so you're solving problems like i talked about earlier that's part of the family the other part of the family is the coaches are like family the other part of the family is the coaches significant others and wives are part of the family and we fed you know we fed 40 guys and an entire coaching staff and wives and their children here at thanksgiving and that equals 70 people and it's it's fun it's fun so family means administration gary barna my my athletic director gives us everything that we need to be successful and he has an open mind for the sport of wrestling and wrestling's important in iowa so that's a no-brainer but not if you're not a wrestling guy but he seems we do it the right way and so the commitment is there from him if we were doofuses you know he the commitment wouldn't be there so family is everybody's all in i mean it's from the restless to the family it goes back to what i said earlier about our people our people are great ryan morty star is great bobby telford is great bobby telford took over for a guy named ben burhau who is great um our medical team is great dr westerman dr wolff jesse donovarth our athletic trainer is great terry brands is great mariah stickley and and elise owens our managers are great my daughter's a manager as well it's great um they're they're hard-working young women our hawkeye wrestling club is is where it needs to be in terms of how they help in their role and now we have four women in there and that's great and you know at least one of their dads is super involved with us but um and so it's one thing that i've learned is that you have to have that and if you don't have that then you have to address it quickly and those outliers you know let's solve that problem let's get it out in the open here right and if there you know if it doesn't work out it's not going to work out that's a heck of a thanksgiving dinner yeah next year well i don't know if it'd be legal but i'd have to check with our compliance and you know they'd have to vet you you can come you can come and see what it's all about this room is full oh man well yeah i'll be back next year then all right awesome last question in 2014 i watched this video four years ago uh of you competing in i believe your first swim meet against your brother terry uh and you came out victorious not really okay so let's i wonder here's what happened i had researched this thing because i'm that's how i am you practice no i didn't but i researched it in swimming if you flinch on that starter block it's a false start you can't twitch a finger and because they would be doing that to get their buddy to move or the guy next to him you know so you have to be rock solid well when we went terry was leaning forward as the gun was going off so he's moving and so i was like no no no false start no no no no and he couldn't hear me he was already in the water and so he took off like a bat out of you nowhere for the end of the pool and couldn't hear me and got to the end of the pool and it was a down and back well that's a hard thing to do with a guy with no body fat and so he burned a lot of energy and he come up on that end of the pool and he was like where's where's he actually didn't see me and so we stopped him and then he came back and then we went another one and i beat him but it's the only time that you know i wouldn't say that he was tuckered out and that's a reason why and i'll also say this we did a time where we timed my race the one i won and then we timed his first down to the wall and then we timed his the actual race where once he hit the wall we timed him on the way back and he beat me now how's that for being a that's pretty honest that's pretty honest accountable wow person and i'm gonna tell you something else getting in those shorts those swim trunks that's impressive they are tight yeah so is there is outside of wrestling is there uh a thing that terry got the better of you i mean i guess this could count as one uh that you're still really bitter about that you need to avenge i mean that's past i mean we he's got an uno title we have uno world championships he's got a uno title i have i have yet to have one morning star has two titles that's unprecedented so there's only four trophies out there and terry's got one of those and i don't have one yet yeah well it's still time tom thank you so much for letting a russian with a tie into your home thanks for listening to this conversation with tom brands to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from marcus aurelius the art of living is more like wrestling than dancing thank you for listening and hope to see you next time