Tom Brands is an Olympic and World Champion in freestyle wrestling and the head wrestling coach at the University of Iowa. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Tom's Twitter: https://twitter.com/tombrandshawk
Hawkeyes' Website: https://hawkeyesports.com/

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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
2:00 - Motivation
16:00 - Mental toughness
20:28 - Weight cutting
22:16 - Olympic dreams
27:11 - 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta 
30:16 - Brother
35:27 - Champion mindset
41:28 - Beyond limits
46:28 - Faith
47:58 - Family
52:03 - Brands vs Brands

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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 1 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's 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 3 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 and 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 3 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 Iowa is 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.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now, here's my conversation with Tom Brantz.

What's the best motivator for you or for your athletes?

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 rented a 3 cylinder Gio with my wife, drove home and mowed the lawn because it hadn't been mowed for a month.

And I remember 1 of our neighbors driving by and they were like, they did a double take, Like, I thought he was in Atlanta.

I just sat on the stand, I got a gold medal put around my neck.

That doesn't mean that it was the right approach or the wrong approach.

But when you were a kid, you and Terry, you dreamed about winning that Olympic gold.

There is the lure of winning, but what drives you is that as you move forward, there's just no reason that you have to settle for anything but being the best.

And if it just, it would get to you to the point where that's not gonna happen to me again.

So what, the thing that keeps you up at night is the losses, and that's not gonna 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 9 ropes when Gable says do 3 ropes and buddy pushups and you're out of here.

And you do 9 or you do them until you can't do any more.

The older I get, the more rare I find it is.

The ingredient of loss feeding, feeding 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, it's when a coach says, okay, finish with 4 ropes and you know, body pushups and 4 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 a 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 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, 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

There's opponents that I have learned a great deal from.

US Open was something that I learned a lot about I learned a lot about positioning.

I learned a lot about the importance of part hair 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

And this is when tech falls were 15 or 12 points so I didn't get tech fall and I wasn't that wasn't a badge of honor for me but I knew I could go with him because it was 1 point takedowns.

I scored 4 takedowns on him and I learned that I had to move my feet.

And I learned what it meant to move your feet constantly.

John Smith is a very, very intense competitor that people know that now, six-time World Olympic champion.

But I did not go in there taking a back seat, even though the score was very lopsided.

But you knew you could stand with the best of the world.

I knew that 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 you can't feel your calf muscle.

I had to get ready for the consolation side of the bracket, because I believe that was in the semis.

You just learn from that, And it was better than learning from a win over a second-ranked senior level guy when you're a junior in college.

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 would have went 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.

I mean, I didn't know when, but it just so happens, you know, 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 so, you know, you're just, You're not gonna.

So what does a relaxed Tom Brands look like?

More like where, you know what, I was pretty dang good and I was getting better every day, but maybe doing 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 the funny farm, let alone the physical farm, whatever you wanna say.

He'd been mentally and physically beat up, but he had to learn to less is more type approach.

How it came around was is you work hard at feeling good.

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 that's something you weren't as good at

Never, 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 you need to learn wrestling, you need to be wrestling.

And as you get older, your body won't do it anymore.

And so to learn wrestling, it's more of a probably a relaxed approach.

So if you had to choose between 2 athletes who would dominate competition, 1 who drills 100,000 reps of a specific takedown, specific technique, or 1 that spends that time live wrestling?

And I like to live wrestling, I was always wanting to live wrestle, bring the warmup into the live wrestle, let's go.

But where I got really, really good was the 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 the 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 fricking guy that would, he 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 he taught Terry and I to hate the bar away from you on that last rep when you're dead.

Then you do the negative and you hate it down.

You look at the bar and you hate it away from you.

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 single most 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?

I'm talking repetition, technique, technique, technique, drill, drill, drill, hit, hit, hit, drive, finish, hit, hit, hit, drive, finish.

But 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 10,000, 20,000 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.

I mean, we didn't have a good performance out there tonight, but you know what?

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 of our corner.

And we talk about that, it's a philosophy.

And so you're reaching your guys that way.

So go back to your point, or your question.

But How do you inspire people to do that?

But I mean, in my experience, what I've seen, 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?

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 doing well.

The other thing is is that when you talk about getting to that next level, a lot of times it's, you know, what held you back was I did everything the coach asked of me and nothing more.

I mean, you can be a great guy 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 coach says.

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, we might be on a whole different path and this guy just excuses himself.

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 I go back to the communication, that young people are comfortable enough to communicate that I need to take the day off.

Just let, exactly, so letting athletes be part of their own development.

Communication to me is letting them know 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 lies and cheating.

And when I say cheating, I'm talking about when they cheat themselves.

And so those become very direct conversations.

I don't have time to waste and neither do you.

We're having a conversation about your accountability.

If you look in the mirror and you're accountable, then 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 has to do with symptoms that you see in the wrestling room.

There's something where the fire's not quite there.

That has to do with mental, emotional, spiritual, physical, everything.

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, 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 then 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.

So on the flip side of problems and technique and repetition, here's 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 mental 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 barriers are down.

Does that have to do with physical usually exhaustion, the warps

It has to do with that and it has to do with 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 young guy that, he's like that.

He doesn't necessarily understand it, he has a lot of questions, but he doesn't.

And he's been here 4 months now, 4 and a half months now, and he's getting better every day.

is a matter of repetition and having an open mind and being extremely accountable and not only accountable that when you maybe, 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.

So people are gonna talk about you, so you might as well have them talking about how doggone tough 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 overtraining.

So you've been 1 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?

I think peaking and burnout are frames of mind or burnout 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 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 when 0 hour comes, that you're gonna be ready to go, and knowing that there's light at the end of the tunnel if you feel like you're burning that candle at both ends.

So you think about Gable and that whole dream of being carried off the mat because you worked so hard.

I do think it's possible to overtrain if you have a lot of distractions.

So if you're looking at your watch running out of the room, then yeah, you're gonna, that frame of mind isn't gonna lend itself to excellency.

And the thing is, is we have to accomplish what we need to get accomplished to get better every day.

You can't kind of accomplish what you need to accomplish, you have to accomplish it.

And 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 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 practice time or starts as a night class and it starts at

You don't go to get the 6.30 class or the 07:00.

So you leave it all behind your heart, your passions completely in it, there's

no- when you walk in that wrestling room, there's no distractions.

Sometimes guys come in there and they wig out.

You have to be willing to go as long as it takes.

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, but it feels like it lasts long and it's painful.

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.

You come in and you're yawning, and you're starting to shrink your body down, and it's that time of year where, hey, I gotta 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,

Have people gotten better with that over the years, over the past few decades?

I think the bottom line is, is having the energy to implement that and taking a guy 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 disciplined enough because when you take them by the hand enough, they will learn that discipline.

This is an important aspect of wrestling, buddy.

So, you know, it's not just go and show up for the match.

I mean, it's not about just making weight either.

That's part of the process, getting ready to

The whole thing, it's the 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, wrestled my whole life with my twin brother.

And when Terry and I would fight, it was wrestling.

And 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 will lose my head.

And Tom and Terry Brands, there was no alpha male.

There's a lot of twins, there's a dominant twin, a lot of them.

Very few times is there a situation where you're gonna, I'm gonna win every time in everything, and then he's thinking the same exact way.

And Terry used to describe it, like when we used to get interviewed a lot about our careers, it'd be like you grabbing a steering wheel and me grabbing a steering wheel and fighting.

That's what it was like when you would wrestle him or fight him.

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 put it in my head.

I remember said something about being an Olympic champion in fifth grade and somebody made fun of me and I got in a fight in a playground.

And I remember getting pulled in, getting in trouble for that.

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Tom Brands: Iowa Wrestling | Lex Fridman Podcast #245