Wrestling Investing: How to Spot Growth Through the Tough Days
As a mindset and mental training coach working with high school and college wrestlers, one theme that comes up over and over again is this:
Athletes often say, “I’m better than that kid; I should have won,” while parents and coaches often say, “You’re better than that kid — you should never lose to them.”
Parents, coaches, and athletes alike often cling to the idea that outcomes should always reflect development and superiority. But wrestling, as in life and the markets, has far more volatility than we often recognize or want to admit. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an expert on success and growth in complex, unpredictable systems, highlights this in his book Fooled by Randomness. He explains how we often fall into the trap of overemphasizing short-term outcomes—treating quick wins or losses as definitive indicators of success—when in reality, it’s the consistent long-term behaviors and principles that lead to meaningful progress.
Volatility Is Not Failure
As you can see by the graph, focusing on “success” will be an emotional roller coaster leading to inconsistencies in motivation, enjoyment and faith.
Over-indexing on losses or mistakes is often a much worse error than the mistake itself. That’s because wrestling requires a strong spirit, and over-indexing on the wrong things increases emotional volatility, eventually eroding confidence, enjoyment, and shrinking the athlete’s willingness to experiment and learn.
If you find yourself loving wrestling some days and hating it others, it’s time to shift your focus and get off the emotional roller coaster.
One match—or one practice—is a poor metric for measuring long-term growth and should not define you. Just like a savvy investor doesn’t obsess over daily fluctuations in the stock market, a wrestler shouldn’t hang their confidence on every takedown or loss. In any competitive environment, where variables like a big move, a lapse in focus, strategy, health and emotion are always shifting, success will not always reflect development.
Short-Term Outcomes Are “Noise”
Taleb describes “noise” as the misleading signals we mistake for meaningful patterns. You can see “noise” in the graph above represented as the sharp ups and downs of success. In wrestling, noise can look like:
One “bad” match against an unranked or subpar opponent
A week of practices where nothing “clicks”
A “bad” tournament or short-term dip in confidence
If you let these become your compass, your performance will be reactive, emotional, and inconsistent.
As one of my former coaching colleagues, Zach Tanelli — the former head wrestling coach at Columbia University and now the associate head coach at Virginia Tech — often said:
“You can wrestle bad and win, and you can wrestle well and lose.”
This statement has always stayed with me. It’s the wrestling version of Taleb’s insight.
The statement is powerful because it gives wrestlers space to focus not on results but on how they want to wrestle. It’s liberating, allowing wrestlers to focus on what they can control directly, rather than the outcome.
The Investor’s Mindset: Wrestlers as Long-Term Builders
Wrestlers are investors in their own development. You’re investing time, energy, sweat, attention, and emotional risk. Great market investors avoid shortcuts. They use sound strategies that can tolerate short-term losses. In wrestling terms, that means:
Working on your weaknesses, even if it feels frustrating or risky
Seeking out tough practice partners
Using matches as feedback
Staying aggressive and open to learning
When you’re too focused on short-term success, you naturally become risk-averse and overly timid:
You avoid trying things that might look like a “mistake” in practice
You only use moves you already know
You stop enjoying the sport because it becomes stale
You lose motivation when the inevitable dip comes
You wrestle scared, avoiding mistakes rather than scoring points
Signals vs. Noise in Youth & Collegiate Wrestling
Parents and coaches can help young athletes focus on the long-term signals of success by asking questions like:
Are they having fun?
Are they excited about learning and trying new skills?
Do they consistently put in effort?
Are they focused during practice?
Are they learning to love the fight, the process, the challenge?
Are they forming lasting relationships with teammates and coaches?
These are the indicators of future success. Wins and losses? Those are noise.
The Power of Time
A snapshot from Taleb’s book, Fooled by Randomness, showing how deceptive it can be to look at short-term outcomes. In the long run, the sound practices are very likely to lead to success.
Taleb uses a powerful chart in Fooled by Randomness to show that the longer your time horizon, the higher your probability of seeing positive returns.
If you check your investment results every minute, you’ll often be discouraged and anxious. But zoom out to months or years, and the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor.
It’s the same in wrestling if your investment strategies are sound.
Stay the Path
“There is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence – and in the end, you make it look like a quantum leap.” — James Dyson
Mindset training for high school wrestlers and mental training for college wrestlers means diligently working to keep the right perspectives. If you’re a wrestler struggling with confidence or match anxiety, remember this: the answer is not to avoid risk or seek perfection, it’s to put those things into a better perspective. Show up. Stay persistent. Focus on the inputs—your effort, your presence, your focus.
As a mindset coach for wrestlers and other athletes, I work with individuals who are learning to do just that.
— Joe Nord