"Don't Get Pinned"- The Beginning of My Coaching Journey

The Passaic High School wrestling team contended regularly for championships in New Jersey and in 1968 I was the top junior varsity 123-pound grappler. Making the varsity wouldn’t be an option that year as that slot was held by the state champion, who practiced a variety of devastating moves on me every day. This was valuable training, not just in humility, but also, as I would come to understand years later, learning to lose is the key to learning to win, and once you really understand that, the key to winning in life is to optimize your learning from all your experience.

Anyway, we were getting ready for a match against the nearby town of Lodi when the coach came to me and said, “You are wrestling varsity tomorrow—at 142.” Our best wrestler at 142 lbs was injured, and based on the resilience I had developed through getting thrashed on a daily basis by the state champ it was the consensus that I might have a better shot of surviving at 142 than the junior varsity wrestlers at 130, 136 or 142. 

In the locker room right before the match, it was easy to imagine what Christians in the Roman Coliseum felt like before becoming lion chow. As I finished putting on the scarlet singlet and slid my knee pads into place the coach came by and looked me in the eyes. This was well before the first “Rocky” movie so I guess he didn’t have any good role models for inspirational speeches because all he said was: “Don’t get pinned!” 

The next thing I remember was the feeling of wearing the varsity jacket while standing in the line-up at the 142-pound position as the referee walked along to check that our nails were cut short enough. The feeling is memorable because the jacket was way too big-like a tent! When my name was called for the match to begin, I walked out to the center of the mat, shook hands with my opponent, and most of what happened thereafter remains a blur, but the home crowd was cheering continuously, and at the end of the match the referee raised both of our hands. Not only did I not get pinned, I had earned a draw. 

This seemed like a success given the expectations set by my coach but as I reflected on the match it slowly dawned on me that I could’ve won. Thus, a seed was planted that generated what has turned out to be a lifelong interest in how coaches help us set expectations for ourselves and how those expectations can either limit or unleash our potential.

This led me to study Psychology as an undergraduate at Clark University, followed by 3 years of intensive training to become a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique, the performance coaching methodology taught at the Juilliard School of Performing Arts and the Royal Academies of Music and Drama, whilst simultaneously completing a Master’s thesis on “Psycho-physical Re-education” (1978). The thesis became my first book BodyLearning, (1981) and it includes stories of learning how to learn, and to coach, juggling, martial arts, singing, swimming, public speaking and writing. Around the same time, I trained as a coach of Tim Gallwey’s Inner Game with Sir John Whitmore in London, and then became the first Master Teacher of Tony Buzan’s Mental Literacy program (1982).

Shortly thereafter, I began offering executive and life coaching, and have worked with many extraordinary clients over the years. My vision has always been to leverage the power of business to promote human flourishing by helping aspiring conscious leaders set expectations that unleash human potential, instead of being pinned down by habitual, conventional thinking.