Have you ever dealt with pressure, nerves, thoughts of doubt that creep into your mind?

You’re not alone. In fact it can happen to some of the best. Bo Jordan is one of the top wrestlers in the nation and has dealt with those thoughts as well. 

Coming from a big successful wrestling family and program, Bo Jordan has had a lot of eyes on him for a long time. He went to St. Parish Graham high school, a national powerhouse coached by his father and four-time state champion Jeff Jordan.  His uncle Jim Jordan was a four-time high school state champion and a two-time NCAA Champion.

Bo became a four-time high school state champion and currently has one All-American honor in one try at Ohio State.

There has been and continues to be a lot of pressure and expectations bestowed upon Bo Jordan. As he puts it, “For sure I feel pressure. Coming from a big family, big high school people put a ton of expectations on you.”


VIDEO GOES HERE
 

Transitioning into college wrestling can be challenging for anyone, even Bo Jordan. In today’s world where we have immediate access to everything people are saying it can be tough not to pay attention. 

Bo says, “It’s easy to get caught up in a pressure cooker. It’s real easy to get caught up in what people expect you to do. What you’re twitter is saying, what Flo is saying. Its real easy to get caught up and not be able to handle it. I think people don’t deal with it well. I certainly didn’t when I first got here.”

And what he said next doesn’t surprise me because I have been around the top coaches and wrestlers in the country and so many of them have something similar to say. Bo points to Tervel Dlagnev. So many of the people I hear from talk about Tervel, his mind and his approach to wrestling. From Bo Jordan, to Kyle Synder, to Tom Ryan, to Zeke Jones, Bruce Burnett the list of people who speak about Tervel in that regard goes on and on.

Tervel has been instrumental in helping Bo take the focus off of winning and fulfilling expectations and rather, as Bo puts it, “Go out there have fun and just think about hitting some cool moves.

Tervel Dlagnev actually has helped me out with it incredibly. If it wasn’t for him I would be probably struggling right now with a lot of expectations.”

Because of his talks with Tervel, Bo now approaches the sport differently. He’s wrestling for the love of the sport instead of trying to win all the time because he is supposed to.

He says his approach now is, “Focus on having fun and say, ‘Hey can I beat this guy today? Can I beat him? Will my leg attacks work on him?’ It makes it a lot more fun and I enjoy it. Tervel’s talked with me a lot and put that in my head and instilled it in my mind before each match. Instead of thinking, ‘If I lose I fail’.

You’re never gonna be good enough for the world anyway. So calm down, take a deep breathe, lets go out there and wrestle, have fun and do what the sport says to do.

It’s still a battle before the match you start thinking these thoughts but at least I know the fight to fight.”


Watch Bo wrestle this weekend in the first big college tournament of the season at the Cliff Keen Las Vegas Invite. Catch all the action LIVE on FloWrestling this Friday and Saturday right here.

Learn more about Bo and his teammates NCAA Champion Nathan Tomasello and World Champion Kyle Snyder.

WATCH- The Program Ohio State: The Freshmen

 

Everyone check out episode 1 of the program ohio state the freshmen!@Snyder_man45 @Franchise_Nate @Bobo_Jordan are great people #Takestates

— Tervel Dlagnev (@TervelDlagnev) December 11, 2014