Dan Gable Quotes

I've been a fanatic about working out all my life.

Wrestling is the only sport I've ever competed in that puts you totally in a situation of constant motion without breaks. I could play football or baseball, swim
but there's always some kind of situation that would break my thoughts, break my concentration.

My advice to young wrestlers is that your surroundings really make a difference. You want to put yourself in good, positive surroundings.

I'm a big believer in starting with high standards and raising them. We make progress only when we push ourselves to the highest level. If we don't progress, we backslide into bad habits, laziness and poor attitude.

I've never changed my life since I was 4 and went to the YMCA with a gym bag. I still have that philosophy. In fact, I still have that gym bag.

Once you've wrestled, everything else in life is easy.

You don't really measure the year until the whole year is done. I'm sure there are some concerned people, including the coaches right now.

There's always ways of motivating yourself to higher levels. Write about it, dream about it. But after that, turn it into action. Don't just dream.

My mind's never gone very far away from what I wanted to accomplish.

Talent is everywhere, winning attitude is not.

There is no mat space for malcontents or dissenters. One must neither celebrate insanely when he wins, nor sulk when he loses. He accepts victory professionally, humbly; he hates defeat, but makes no poor display of it.

The bells are a very good investment. They never break if they are maintained. I can teach the kids the basics. They may play bells for only one year, but many of them go on to play at local churches.

I'm delighted to be back in coaching. Our goal is to put Iowa wrestling back on top, and I want to do everything I can to make it happen.

You can't ever work too much because there's no such thing as being in too good condition. You can't ever lift too many weights because you can't ever get too strong. You can't ever wrestle too much because you can always do better.

A clean, hard-fought wrestling match is the most honest of athletic contests. There is no technological interventions, no teammates to blame, no panel of judges to bias the score. In wrestling, you compete or you quit. No alibis. I like that

All I worried about was what Owings was doing to me, instead of what I was doing to him. When you start worrying about that stuff, you're going down the wrong path.

Right out of high school I never had the fear of getting beat, which is how most people lose.

My valleys are higher than most people's peaks. I stay at that level.

Once you've wrestled, everything in life is easy.

I can take anyone down at anytime; they can't take me down; no one can ride or turn me; I can control anyone.

When I lifted weights, I didn't lift just to maintain my muscle tone. I lifted to increase what I already had, to push to a new limit. Every time I worked, I was getting a little better. I kept moving that limit back and back. Every time I walked out of the gym, I was a little better than when I walked in.

The 1st period is won by the best technician. The 2nd period is won by the kid in the best shape. The 3rd period is won by the kid with the biggest heart.

More endearingly than any other sport, wrestling teaches self control and pride.

I vowed I wouldn't ever let anyone destroy me again. I was going to work at it every day, so hard that I would be the toughest guy in the world. By the end of practice, I wanted to be physically tired, to know that I'd been through a workout. If I wasn't tired, I must have cheated somehow, so I stayed a little longer.

We, as a wrestling community, better remember it is more than one individual that makes a winner.

If you are afraid to fail, you will never succeed.

Wrestling has been a way of life with me day in and day out. I won't get too far away from it. I might walk through the wrestling room once a week. I could go every day if I wanted. But just walk through, make sure it's still there.

Raising your level of performance requires a proper mentality and meaning from within. This gives you the ability and drive to work on the things necessary to go to a higher level. When people ask me how to raise their level of performance, the first thing I ask is, How important is it to you?

Determination is the strength needed to succeed.

Gold medals aren't really made of gold. They're made of sweat, determination, and a hard-to-find alloy called guts.

The obvious goals were there- State Champion, NCAA Champion, Olympic Champion. To get there I had to set an everyday goal which was to push myself to exhaustion or, in other words, to work so hard in practice that someone would have to carry me off the mat.