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EPISODE LINKS:
Dan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/dannygable
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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
2:56 - Russian wrestling
4:34 - Coaching the science, art, and toughness of wrestling
11:30 - The pain of defeat and the tattoo of a hawk clawing out the heart
14:29 - Roger Bannister and the 4 minute mile
17:35 - The dream of becoming an Olympic champion
20:03 - The day in 1972 of the Olympic final
23:35 - Sauna story
25:05 - Match against the Russian
30:38 - The role of fear in wrestling
35:40 - The line between physical wrestling and anger
40:18 - Tragic loss of Dan's sister
47:46 - The role of family in wrestling
53:08 - Wrestling being voted out of the Olympics
57:52 - To beat the best you must study the best
1:03:05 - The role of luck (Old Man and the Sea)

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The following is a conversation with Dan Gable from 2 years ago.

I did not previously publish this conversation as part of this podcast, but as a separate thing.

And as a result, it did not receive many listens.

Let me be honest and say that while I usually don't care about how many listens or views something gets, in this 1 case, I feel like I failed 1 of my heroes.

I feel I didn't properly introduce a truly special human being to an audience that might find him as inspiring as I did.

Dan Gable is 1 of the greatest Olympic athletes of all time.

Bigger than records and medals, to many like myself, he's a symbol of guts, spirit, mental toughness, and relentless hard work.

As a wrestler, he was undefeated in high school, undefeated in college until his very last match, and having lost that match, he found another level and became a world champion and an Olympic champion.

And most importantly, he did so perfectly dominating his opponents.

He did not surrender a single point at the 1972 Olympic Games.

As a coach, he led the Iowa Hawkeyes to 15 national titles and 25 consecutive Big 10 championships.

He coached 152 All-Americans, 45 National Champions, 106 Big Time Champions, and 12 Olympians, including 8 medalists.

He's the author of several books, including, A Wrestling Life 1 and 2, and coaching wrestling successfully.

Trial Labs, a machine learning company, ExpressVPN, Grammarly writing helper tool, and SimpliSafe Home Security.

So the choice is AI, privacy, grammar, or safety.

And if you wish, click the sponsor links below to get a discount and to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that I spent a few days in Iowa and got to attend a wrestling duel meet in the historic Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Part of me wanted to stay in Iowa forever, to drill takedowns, to start a family, to live life simply.

Wrestling is 1 of the pure sports, both beautiful and brutal, where both mental toughness and technical mastery of the highest form are rewarded with victory and everything else is punished with defeat.

And every such loss weighs heavy on the minds of anyone who has ever stepped on the wrestling mat, including myself.

The same is true for 1 of the greatest wrestlers in history of the sport, the man who graciously welcomed me into his home for this conversation, the legend, Dan Gable.

If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman.

And now, here's my conversation with Dan Gable.

You're persistent, and I love that, because you've been trying to get me on this podcast for a long time.

And until I saw you on another podcast and you said you were Russian, did I call you back.

Because Russia to me is leading the world in wrestling, almost every year.

What's the difference between American wrestling and Russian wrestling?

And they really study the sport, they're really good technically, they're really good in strategy.

They don't really push the real toughness, they don't push conditioning.

And so Americans, we need what they have, Russians need what we have.

And when you get the 2 together, and for me, Why I could beat the Russians is because I went their way a little bit, but I kept my toughness.

So when did you become a bit of an artist?

Most people thought I was already an artist just because I won 181 straight matches.

And not just winning, but you know, kinda punishing people.

And from that point of view, yeah, I might have been pretty good, but I had a long ways to go yet.

And I didn't really realize that, or I should have, I should say, I didn't really know how to get it out of me until I had a loss.

And then I realized I got to buckle down, learn some of that science, become more of an artist.

So that's the Russian way has this drilling technique, thousands of reps.

How do you think you work on the science, the art part?

I think Dave Schultz was our guy in America that probably showed us that being artistic, you needed that.

He went over there as a high schooler and wrestled in some major tournaments over there.

He used that Russian science and then he was already an American and he saw how I trained athletes, he saw what I did in the Olympics, saw what other people, how we held up, and he applied that as well.

But I'd have to say he was more the artistic type.

He was more of a Russian than an American when it came to wrestling.

You've coached 45 national champions, 106 Big 10 champions, and 8 Olympic medalists, which is incredible.

What is a common thread between them and what are maybe some of the fundamental differences?

I think the common thread is that they all had 1 of those 2 avenues that we talked already, and because we intertwined them.

So in a Russian wrestling room, they got the same people.

Most of the time in an American wrestling room, we had the same people.

But when I was out recruiting, at first I recruited just attitude, But I needed more than that.

I needed some genetics in that wrestling room to actually, that hard work people, you know, they could look and see, wow, that execution, That's unbelievable.

But yet, I can beat that guy after the first minute.

So you think the art, the technique is genetics.

And timing and your quickness and your strength.

You know, the Russians, they usually picked out the people that can go into that sport.

That was the old fashioned sports school.

But it's mostly like when you walk into a Russian wrestling room, you see them hitting skills, techniques.

You don't see them banging against each other that much.

But then when practice is over, you might not see a bunch of sprints.

You might see them walk over to the ropes and they drop down from the ceiling and they'll jump up and climb a rope.

And then they come down and then They don't jump right back on.

They have 3 or 4 other guys go and then they jump back on.

Whereas I probably made my guys climb them, get right back down, climb them right back again.

But I also realized that I had to have a mix of that.

I mean, those guys looked up and Dan Gable and what was the role in helping these athletes become their best, these national champions?

Well, you had to first of all prove that you were, knew what you were doing.

In terms of technique or in terms of hard work?

They just, you had to be the first guy there and the last guy to leave and you had to be the most dedicated guy, even though they were the ones that's trying to win the championships.

You had to prove that you were gonna work just as hard as they were as a coach.

So you can see it when you, you know it when you see it?

I'm picking up after them and you're analyzing them.

And so, you know, use that type of strategy.

And over time, when you prove it works, because some of my kids that were the best kids in the world really shouldn't have been a wrestler.

But they worked so hard, they developed themselves.

I mean, that means pushing kids to their limit.

Yeah, but you can't push kids to their limit, and even when you push them to their limit, that's not their limit, because their limit's above and beyond that.

I mean, yeah, coaches sometimes accidentally don't, they lose kids.

Because of the heat, because of hard work and all that.

And by that I mean, you gotta know them pretty well.

Every once in a while you make a little bit of a mistake, but if you don't react right on that mistake before it gets too far, then it's gonna be a casualty.

And I don't mean somebody dying necessarily, but maybe something that could turn them off, or maybe something that could run them away, or maybe something that, Wow, that was close.

Maybe shouldn't have pushed them that far.

And it's not just what you know, it's what you know about them.

You know it how because you're the first 1 there and you're the last 1 to leave and you sit in the environment with them.

You're there in the morning for practice sometimes.

You're there in the afternoon for 2 or 3 hours.

After practice, you might have a hot room or you might have a sauna or a steam or a whirlpool and you get in there with them and you listen.

You know, you're not just feeding out information.

You do that, but you're taking in a lot of that too.

And I'm telling you, when you get in an atmosphere that they're relaxed and they feel comfortable, it's like a massage.

And that's after practice in 1 of those areas that people are around you, you learn a lot.

I mean, you got a lot to learn as a coach.

And when you get in that atmosphere, when all of a sudden you feel like very comfortable, words start flowing.

And when those words flow, you take them in as a coach.

And there's something probably gonna be said that you can do and act upon that's gonna help certain situations.

I've saved a couple of kids' lives, for sure, that were on the brink.

Sometimes performance is at such a high level in a high-level atmosphere that life and death is actually involved.

And I don't mean pushing a kid to where he just dies, but I mean he might feel himself as a failure.

You're putting so much heart, so much blood and heart and sweat and your whole meaning of life becomes winning.

So, and sometimes it's so hard to lose within that context.

So if in your, I think the first wrestling life you wrote about Chad Zapato who lost, I mean, an incredible wrestler but lost in 3 finals in the nationals and has this tattoo of a hawk clawing out the human heart.

So what lessons, is there any lessons from the incredible wrestling he's done, but also the incredible suffering that he went through on himself?

Yeah, again, you like that word suffering, which is okay.

No, no, no, no, no, keep it, keep it, because it fits right in where I want.

I have to turn that suffering around to where he makes and feels good about himself, or better, doesn't have to feel perfect, because he did lose, You know?

And so, but you have to actually get him to realize that, yeah, he's still unique.

Compared to the walk of the earth, he was unbelievably unique.

Right at the top, just a little bit short of.

But because it was, you know, he felt the suffering, You now have to go about and change that and put it into goodwill some way.

And because you really have a lot of goodwill, you can do a lot of goodwill.

Years of tattooing, years of covering the tattoos.

And he told me he moved to Cal, I go, why are you moving to California?

Because he was here for a couple of years after his wrestling was done because he had a good job around here.

And he was, I thought he was doing a good job, but he just, he said, I had to escape.

Yeah, same as the cover up with the tattoo.

And I go, is there any reason why you're going to California?

He says, that's where Everybody goes to hide.

But I said, I think you're wrong there, but I think what will determine your life will be what you do from now on.

Exactly, and he went someplace that he thought he could fit into, and I think he did.

And I think he's got a good job, and he's helping people, and he covered that tattoo with feathers, another tattoo.

Well, in the end, it's a beautiful story.

So you mentioned Roger Bannister, again, I think in your first book, somebody you looked up to, that's the man who broke the 4 minute mile, right?

When everybody said it was impossible, everyone thought it was impossible.

You would die, It's not humanly possible.

So What lesson do you take from that story for yourself?

The impossible, trying to accomplish the impossible.

I mean, if you looked at where the mile time is right now, compared to that 4 minute mile, which when it was broke by a couple tenths or 3 or 4 tenths, it's now broke by another 20 seconds.

And it's pretty much common knowledge that you gotta run a 4 minute mile if you're gonna go somewhere now, or below if you're gonna win events at major level, that you gotta be able to do that.

And so you can take that and you can look at what in time history has as its record performance, and you can realize that, ah, that record performance, it's gonna change.

And they don't take into all the factors of knowledge.

They don't take in all the factors of better shoes.

They don't take in all the factors of better understanding of nutrition.

I went to practice every day in high school for at least my sophomore and my junior and part of my senior year, And all of a sudden, a new rule came up.

The rule said, before that, it said, these, most of the coaches, we don't want you drinking water at practice.

I mean, and you're sweating, and then you're sweating so much that you're almost out of sweat.

And so you're mostly at the end of practice, you're not even wrestling.

You're sitting against a wall, because you're tired.

So then all of a sudden, they say, okay, go and drink water during practice, drink Gatorade during practice.

And all of a sudden, at the end of practice, we're still out there competing.

And so I look at my career for 2 and a half years where I, and junior high too, so I got another 3 years where I didn't really, wasn't able to push as good as I could because I just was probably under.

Yeah, so what, so, but at the individual level, in terms of the impossible, when did you first believe the thing that maybe probably people would laugh at you about, that you would be an Olympic champion?

Well, I always visualized me being the best.

Yeah, I was, because I was a, I don't know if you should call it a dreamer or somebody that, I was just involved with competitive sports at the YMCA from age 5.

Did you tell people that dream, that you're gonna be Olympic champion 1 day?

And the only reason why they knew, because there was something a little different about this guy.

And he was swinging baseball bats so much right-handed and so much left-handed with nobody even there throwing the ball, that all of a sudden when they walked by, all of a sudden the grass was down to dirt on both sides.

So it's like, they saw me out in the yard playing by myself sports, or you get the neighborhood kids and you play a lot.

But if they weren't there, if you walked in my front room, I was hiking a ball like I was the quarterback, and I was running through the furniture, that type of stuff.

So, who saw this guy mostly was probably the parents.

And the coaches at the YMCA level, the junior high level, they saw this guy come first and end up last.

You know, actually before I went to the Olympics, when they tested me, they tested everybody.

And I probably came back with 1 of the highest scores.

But it was not like the highest person on this and this and that.

I was all high across the board, straight across the board high on every 1 of them.

But there was always people that were higher than

Then they would test on something else and go back up.

And so I really didn't have too many flaws, but I didn't have any things that also said that you were gonna be unscored upon at the Olympic Games.

Right, so take me through that day if you could.

1972, when you were going for the 68 kilogram freestyle wrestling gold, you scored

points, if I'm correct, and had 0 points scored on you.

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Dan Gable: Olympic Wrestling, Mental Toughness & the Making of Champions | Lex Fridman Podcast #152