InterMat: Wrestling, from every angle

Q&A with Rob Prebish: Author of “The Solitary Wrestler”

By Jason Bryant
jbryant@intermatwrestle.com

Your vision is blurred, you’re cramping up in nearly every muscle imaginable. The heat of the box you’re enclosed in seems inescapable, but just a few more drops of sweat, just a few more and it’ll all be over.

A digital readout is your enemy – a square platform on the cold floor is your destiny. Or is it?

With sweeping new weight management regulations coming to a high school near you, if they haven’t already, has turned the tide on a once very bleak reality with the sport of wrestling.

Serious weight cutting hasn’t been completely eradicated, but the tide of bad press that comes with stereotypes of wrestlers being sucked out, starved and malnourished is starting to wane.

In 1997, the death of three collegiate wrestlers literally sent shockwaves through the wrestling community – prompting change, not to mention a new set of collegiate weight classes.

Now, almost 10 years later, weight management plans are starting to work, although some of those still clinging to the ways things were done generations past still have a place, but it’s dwindling.

Rob Prebish, a high school wrestling coach at Massaponax High School in Fredericksburg, Va., has recently published on eBook that will hopefully shed some light on the negative impacts of improper weight cutting and how to combat those misconceptions and wrestle as a healthy, complete athlete.

Prebish, a former Cadet Greco-Roman national champion in his days as a youth, has always been a man of small stature and a big voice, but his written words in “The Solitary Wrestler,” could speak louder than any of his colorful outbursts.

What was the idea behind writing the book?

Cutting weight has been one of wrestling's dark secrets; it's something we all do (or did) but never talk about. Coaches in the past cared less about how the athlete cut weight, as long as he made weight. ( New Jersey freestyle and Greco coach) Vern Zellner said it best when he found out that I wrote this book. He said, “You were the worst weight cutter in the world!”

And that is a big part of why I wrote the book. I almost died in 1991 cutting weight for a college match. It was one of the scariest things I have ever dealt with. Imagine lying in the emergency room with an IV in your arm, listening to the doctor basically chew you out for destroying your body. I almost died!

How crazy is that for a 19 year old college freshman to deal with! Unfortunately it took three college wrestlers dying as a result of cutting weight the wrong way in order for the wrestling community to wake up and make changes. Weight cutting was never talked about; it was taboo.

Many coaches today still believe that there are no problems with weight cutting in wrestling and are resistant to talk about it. We can not turn a blind eye as was done previously. The physical problems I have developed as a result of poor weight cutting- hypoglycemia (low blood sugar)and especially chronic fatigue syndrome have been a battle ever since. But the psychological scars from the things I did to myself are worse.

I still have nightmares about having to cut weight for a match, running from my coaches, and of the sauna.

How long had you thought about writing it?

To be honest, the book was my father's idea. Because of my background in health education and in wrestling, he thought it would be a great idea to present almost a cautionary tale about why cutting weight the wrong way can hurt your body. And it would give me the opportunity to finally get those old demons out of my head. Writing the book was a very therapeutic, almost cathartic experience.

My father helped edit the text, so he really got to see the true effects of what I did to cut weight and how it affected me physically and emotionally throughout my high school and collegiate career- things I always kept hidden from him and my mother.

Who will benefit the most from reading “The Solitary Wrestler?”

I think my book will benefit wrestlers, their parents, and their coaches. Gone are the days of doing whatever it takes to cut weight for wrestling. Some parents and wrestling coaches really need to wake up and place less emphasis on weight cutting.

Wrestling is by far, the toughest, most demanding sport in the world. Adding in poor weight management into the equation just makes it even more difficult to be successful. I think young wrestlers who read my book will get a better understanding that you don't need to cut weight in order to be successful. Wrestling is much more scientific nowadays with all of the advances in nutrition and fitness.

Why do you feel the name is fitting for the story?

The hardest part of the writing process was coming up with a good title. I'm not very good at creative writing, so coming up with a catchy title was difficult. Wrestling is an individual sport; cutting weight for wrestling can be a lonely, solitary thing. You can't have somebody else cut your weight for you. The wrestler has to do it all alone, hence the solitary wrestler.

Do you feel the new weight regulations, had they been in place during your wrestling career, would have been beneficial?

Absolutely. I know that at 135 lbs. for my wrestling physical during my senior year of high school, the doctor would not have certified me to wrestle at 103 like he did. The regulations that we use are a great guideline to build responsibility and control over the amount of weight one can lose.

If the regulations had been in place when I wrestled, I doubt I would have cut the amount of weight that I did. I mean, I was cutting almost twenty pounds every week to get down to weight in high school and in college. I was skipping meals and barely drinking any water. Imagine trying to wrestle like that. What is scarier is the fact that I won almost 100 high school matches dehydrated, with low blood sugar, etc.

What would have happened if we had the weight regulations in place back then?

The book has a lot of personal experience, how do you feel this will help a reader in understanding the issue?

I think the personal experiences are very important to get a full idea of what poor weight cutting will do to you. I don't want any wrestler to have to live what I went through during high school and college.

I don't blame anyone but myself; I'm sure I could have done things differently, maybe not cut as much weight. But just about everyone around was cutting massive amounts of weight. It's what we did. I hope some of the stories in the book shock the reader, so they really see that something had to be done to correct the problems with poor weight cutting.*

Why an eBook?

Again, this was my father's idea. He runs an E-book business for religious studies scholars in his field through his on line journal, the Journal of Buddhist Ethics. There are links scattered throughout the book, so if you click on a link, it will take you to a specific website.

More information about that link can be found. The more access to information, the better. E-books are cheaper, and since most people have computers, especially laptops, you can download the book to your computer and take it with you. It saves paper.

What are you trying to gain by writing this and who are you trying to help with this book?

The purpose of the book is to show that wrestlers do not need to cut weight to be successful in wrestling. If the athlete chooses to lose weight, he/she needs to do it correctly, making sure that they follow correct nutritional and training habits. I do not want any wrestler to have to endure the things that I did to my body.

No one should almost have to die to make weight, just for a sport. Parents and coaches also need to understand that they must be a part of the wrestler's weight management program. Coaches are held more accountable today and have to take an active role to emphasize nutrition over starvation.

As a wrestling coach, how much of the book is derived from how you teach your wrestlers, especially your first-year kids, how to properly cut or drop weight?

Most of the training tips came from the things we do in our training program for wrestling. To be perfectly honest, I do not emphasize cutting weight for my wrestlers. We follow our state's weight management program to the letter. If one of my wrestlers wishes to cut weight, we take a look at their personal management program and plan accordingly.

I would rather have a physically strong and in shape team, than one who has sucked a ton of weight. We run a lot before practice, drill technique and lift during the season. I am a stickler for proper technique in the practice room. We discuss nutrition and keep plenty of water in the wrestling room every day.

If one of my wrestlers is not eating correctly or not managing their weight correctly, I sit down with them and talk about what they need to do. If they do not do it, they sit out of competition until they get a grasp on their program. Out of season, we lift harder and have a little more fun. I try to be the coach that I never had; it's a little bit of the enforcer, a bit of the technician, and some of being their friend.

We work hard, but also take time to have fun. If wrestling isn't fun, kids won't stay with it. Don't get me wrong, I want to win as badly as the next coach, but I am not willing to compromise my beliefs or break rules, just to be successful. As a coach, I have learned that this whole thing isn't about/me, it's about my athletes.

Do you think your book can help dispel the conception that all wrestlers starve themselves and are sickly?

I definitely think so. With the horror stories come ones of success through /not /cutting weight. Remember, Pat Smith and Nate Gallick did not cut much weight, if any and look at their wrestling success.

With weight management programs in place all over the country, we are beginning to see healthier, stronger wrestlers. With healthier, stronger wrestlers, comes action packed matches. No longer are wrestlers gassing in the middle of the second period because they did not eat for five days before the match.

How have things changed for the better since your career finished?

With the weight management programs that have come into wrestling over the past few years, we see fewer athletes struggling with their weights like I did. I think everything happens for a reason, a purpose.

Had I continued wrestling in college after almost dying, I think I would have died at some point after that from cutting too much weight the wrong way. After I stopped wrestling, I never wanted to see a wrestling match or be involved with wrestling ever again. I hated the sport and wanted nothing to do with it.

I went a very long time without the sport and did not miss it. It took my first coaching job, at Bishop McNamara High School in Forestville, Md., to realize that wrestling can be fun. Today, I can not see myself without being involved in the sport. The past eight years of teaching and coaching have been a blessing. I'm a bit of a storyteller in the classroom, using experiences as teachable moments.

I take after my father in that respect. I absolutely love what I do and could not see myself doing anything else.

How much did the deaths of the three college wrestlers in 1997-98 affect you personally?

The deaths of those three wrestlers really hit home. I can remember sitting in my appartment thinking, “that could have been me in 1991!”

Everything that each of those wrestlers did, I did during my career. To be honest, I was worse than they were! It was an awful thing to happen, because athletes dying should not be a mechanism for reform. It should not have taken their deaths to have a weight control program implemented.

I'm sad for their families, because no one should have to endure what they went through. Hopefully with all of the reforms and with my book, there will be no more deaths from poor weight management.

How much did (the deaths) impact the writing of the book?

Their deaths were in the back of my head, because a lot of those associated with wrestling did not want to attribute their deaths to cutting too much weight in too short of a period.

Some were quick to blame the supplement Creatine as the thing that killed one of them; it definitely did not help things, but was not the overall cause of death. There is no other way to look at it- all three wrestlers were working out with too many layers of sweats on, including rubber suits, in an environment that was way too hot. Once the body dehydrates, it loses the ability to cool down.

Once that happens, the body overheats and shuts down. Their bodies just overheated and shut down. Their deaths kept bringing back the memories of me struggling to lose that last pound after not eating or drinking for days, listening to my father calling me lazy because I could barely walk, let alone run, and almost dying as a result of dehydration.

Final thoughts

Writing the book really helped heal the wounds that were always just under the surface. The more I wrote, the more I began to talk to my parents about what I went through during high school and college. I think they were shocked to hear about the things that I did to my body. I loved wrestling, yet hated it at the same time. I tried to quit at least three or four times in high school simply because I could not take the weight cutting anymore. My parents and I constantly fought throughout my career over my weight.

I said and did a lot of things I regret. Writing the book allowed the three of us come together and really realize that we all did some things wrong. I used to view my parents as the enemy, but today they are a major part of my life and I am thankful for the sacrifices they made for me for wrestling. We can look back at those chapters of our lives and be grateful that all three of us survived.

For information on how to order "The Solitary Wrestler" click here.

InterMat Lead Writer
Jason Bryant