The bus left at 5:50 a.m. from the hotel, taking the U.S. women’s freestyle team to its morning workout at the University of Iowa. Some of the athletes thought it was just going to be for a morning run. Wednesday’s morning workout was much, much more than just a run.
The U.S. women’s team’s team did their workout in the dark, by running up and down the stairs and all over Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
Remember that famous poster of the Brands brothers, with one Brands carrying the other Brands up those stairs? That is the workout the women had to endure this morning.
There were no lights on in the arena, except for at the top of the stands in foyer. They would do their workout in the pitch dark, where nobody could see what they were doing except those who were there.
Coach Terry Steiner knows all about those grueling workouts in Carver-Hawkeye, when he was at Iowa and competed for Coach Dan Gable. The Brands twins were his teammates then and they did this training together. He wanted to share that opportunity with the best women wrestlers in our nation as part of their visit to Iowa.
The women started the workout by jogging around the top of the stadium to loosen up. While the women were warming up, Steiner talked to me about how it is the perfect place to work out, because of the long steps up and the nearly quarter-mile run around the perimeter at the top of the stairs.
Once the athletes had a few laps in, Coach sent them down to the basketball floor. Carver-Hawkeye is built dug into the hill so the floor is all the way down at the bottom of the bleachers.
There were two women assigned to each of the stairways. He asked the team to start going and down the stairs, first in a jog, then at full speed. The next drill had the women coming up the stairs, then doing a sprint around the quarter-mile lap when the reached the top. After the lap was over, they went back down their staircase.
The most challenging drill came at the end. One of the wrestlers would put their partner on their back and carry her all the way to the top of the long stairway. Once they reached the top, the athletes were asked to go into live pummeling, with the wrestler who was carried pushing their partner as hard as they could.
Each of the women did this a number of times, switching back between the job of being carried and the job of doing the carrying. The drill pushed the women to their limit. I was exhausted just watching it.
When it was over, Coach Steiner asked them to do two more laps around the arena. The clock in the arena said 7:00 a.m., and the athletes had been going hard for an hour.
When they were done, Steiner gave a pep talk for the athletes, explaining to them that they had experienced the secret about what it took to be a champion. He said that it was very simple, and had to do with pushing yourself beyond fatigue and being focused when you are the most tired.
There are two other things that I learned from this practice. First off, I am a terrible photographer.
I couldn’t get the video camera to capture very much in the dark, and had just as little luck getting the digital photo camera to cooperate. The automatic settings wanted nothing to do with lack of lighting. I got a few decent images, and will have a video of Elena Pirozhkova and Tatiana Padilla that I should be able to post later today. Their intensity was admirable, and I interviewed them afterwards on video about it.
Second, I was able to see how tough and well-conditioned our women athletes are and just how much they are willing to do in order to pursue their Olympic dreams. They were able to handle this extreme test of their bodies, their minds and their courage, and will have something they can draw upon as they continue their training in the future.
The workout was inspiring for me to watch. You can watch some of it also if you see the video of Elena and Tatiana. Part of it is dark, but you really can get a sense of it when you watch the women in training.
By the way, I may get another chance with the photos and videos of this workout. Coach Steiner said that the team might do this again sometime later in the week. And this time, he might ask them to turn on the lights in the stadium
