We have been settled in for three days now and training has been going great! Day one was travel and light drill/sauna. Day two and three we had a workout at one and six. The first practice we drilled our areas of concentration and did two matches. I wrestled with my bro and he gave me a World Class look. In the afternoon, Brandon Slay put me through a tough swim workout. We did a ladder, it started with one down and back, then two, and then three, then three again and back down. After that, we did sprints, four down and back and four down. I’m not the world’s best swimmer so by the end I was pretty exhausted. After that we “cooled down” with a little water slide action.

I’m talking amusement park type water slides. They had one that you went down with a tube and it had sharp turns and one that was more straight down and you gained a lot of speed. It was a good cool down and we had a blast.

The first practice today, Brands ran the warmup for the first half hour. After that, we got in 16 minutes of live wrestling. I wrestled Slay two matches and we battled! He’s good for the first two periods but if it goes to the third the gas starts running low in the tank. I credit that to my hard pace. In between matches, I was able to watch Obe Blanc and J.D Bergman wrestle Germans at their weight and they both looked hungry and ready. They wrestled very aggressively and scored a lot of points. This afternoon we played 20 minutes of soccer as our warmup.

My team won a close game, and in my opinion it came down to me being a better goal tender than J.D Bergman. That and we had the German coach on our team and he could play some soccer. After that, we went with our individual coaches and worked on strategy for certain opponents. Zack Esposito had the job of wrestling me like the guy from Russia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. Zack did a great job of mimicking my competition and I feel very prepared for this tournament. After our last practice, we had a cookout and the food was outstanding. We had brats, chicken, and turkey pork right off the grill along with potatoes and salad. It was a perfect way to end our first training cycle.

Tomorrow is a day off and some of the guys are going to Berlin to walk around downtown while others are going to the training center to sauna or swim. The sauna/ swim option is better for the guys that are watching their weight.

All right, I’m going to bed. Ending on a good note, the team is getting some great training over here in Germany and we are in stride to make a huge impact at the World Championships.