Dan Gable: Olympic Wrestling, Mental Toughness & the Making of Champions
体育与武术音乐与艺术生物与进化政治与社会技术与编程
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donwrestlinggotdidnsaidwasnpracticeguyolympicgableeverdanwonbestbettergoinghardroomdoingable
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🎙️ 完整对话（1533 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with Dan Gable
以下是与丹·盖博的对话
Lex Fridman (00:02.720)
from two years ago.
从两年前开始。
Lex Fridman (00:04.440)
I did not previously publish this conversation
我之前没有发表过这段对话
Lex Fridman (00:06.640)
as part of this podcast, but as a separate thing.
作为这个播客的一部分，但作为一个单独的东西。
Lex Fridman (00:10.000)
And as a result, it did not receive many listens.
结果，它没有得到太多的聆听。
Dan Gable (00:13.600)
Let me be honest and say that while I usually
让我诚实地说，虽然我通常
Lex Fridman (00:16.680)
don't care about how many listens or views something gets,
不在乎有多少人收听或浏览某件事，
Dan Gable (00:19.840)
in this one case, I feel like I failed one of my heroes.
在这件事上，我觉得我辜负了我的英雄之一。
Lex Fridman (00:23.580)
I feel I didn't properly introduce
我觉得我没有正确介绍
Dan Gable (00:25.280)
a truly special human being to an audience
对观众来说是一个真正特别的人
Lex Fridman (00:28.260)
that might find him as inspiring as I did.
这可能会发现他和我一样鼓舞人心。
Dan Gable (00:31.400)
Dan Gable is one of the greatest
丹·盖博是最伟大的人之一
Lex Fridman (00:33.980)
Olympic athletes of all time.
历届奥运会运动员。
Dan Gable (00:36.300)
Bigger than records and medals, to many like myself,
对于像我这样的许多人来说，比记录和奖牌更重要，
Lex Fridman (00:39.320)
he's a symbol of guts, spirit, mental toughness,
他是勇气、精神、坚韧精神的象征，
Lex Fridman (00:43.320)
and relentless hard work.
和不懈的努力。
Lex Fridman (00:45.420)
As a wrestler, he was undefeated in high school,
作为一名摔跤手，他在高中时保持不败，
Dan Gable (00:48.180)
undefeated in college until his very last match.
直到最后一场比赛为止，他在大学期间保持不败。
Lex Fridman (00:51.600)
And having lost that match, he found another level
输掉那场比赛后，他找到了另一个高度
Lex Fridman (00:55.560)
and became a world champion and an Olympic champion.
并成为世界冠军和奥运会冠军。
Lex Fridman (00:58.800)
And most importantly, he did so
Dan Gable (01:01.040)
perfectly dominating his opponents.
Lex Fridman (01:03.440)
He did not surrender a single point
Dan Gable (01:05.200)
at the 1972 Olympic games.
Lex Fridman (01:07.800)
As a coach, he led the Iowa Hawkeyes to 15 national titles
Lex Fridman (01:12.360)
and 25 consecutive Big Ten championships.
Lex Fridman (01:15.040)
He coached 152 All Americans, 45 national champions,
Dan Gable (01:19.840)
106 Big Ten champions, and 12 Olympians,
Lex Fridman (01:23.320)
including eight medalists.
Dan Gable (01:25.280)
He's the author of several books,
Lex Fridman (01:26.960)
including A Wrestling Life One and Two,
Lex Fridman (01:29.840)
and Coaching Wrestling Successfully.
Lex Fridman (01:32.580)
Quick mention of our sponsors.
Dan Gable (01:34.280)
Trial Labs, a machine learning company, ExpressVPN,
Lex Fridman (01:38.100)
Grammarly writing helper tool,
Lex Fridman (01:40.780)
and Simply Safe Home Security.
Lex Fridman (01:43.200)
So the choice is AI, privacy, grammar, or safety.
Dan Gable (01:47.780)
Choose wisely, my friends.
Lex Fridman (01:49.240)
And if you wish, click the sponsor links below
Dan Gable (01:51.820)
to get a discount and to support this podcast.
Lex Fridman (01:54.560)
As a side note, let me say that I spent a few days in Iowa
Lex Fridman (01:57.960)
and got to attend a wrestling duel meet
Lex Fridman (02:00.320)
in the historic Carver Hawkeye Arena.
Dan Gable (02:02.860)
Part of me wanted to stay in Iowa forever
Lex Fridman (02:05.480)
to drill takedowns, to start a family, to live life simply.
Dan Gable (02:10.140)
Wrestling is one of the pure sports,
Lex Fridman (02:12.520)
both beautiful and brutal,
Dan Gable (02:14.920)
where both mental toughness and technical mastery
Lex Fridman (02:17.640)
of the highest form are rewarded with victory,
Lex Fridman (02:21.040)
and everything else is punished with defeat.
Lex Fridman (02:23.960)
And every such loss weighs heavy on the minds
Dan Gable (02:26.120)
of anyone who has ever stepped on the wrestling mat,
Lex Fridman (02:29.240)
including myself.
Dan Gable (02:31.000)
The same is true for one of the greatest wrestlers
Lex Fridman (02:33.920)
in history of the sport,
Dan Gable (02:35.400)
the man who graciously welcomed me into his home
Lex Fridman (02:38.200)
for this conversation, the legend, Dan Gable.
Dan Gable (02:42.120)
If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
Lex Fridman (02:44.440)
review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify,
Dan Gable (02:47.720)
support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter
Lex Fridman (02:50.480)
at Lex Friedman.
Lex Fridman (02:51.920)
And now, here's my conversation with Dan Gable.
Lex Fridman (02:56.880)
You're persistent, I love that,
Dan Gable (02:58.320)
because you've been trying to get me on this podcast
Lex Fridman (02:59.920)
for a long time.
Lex Fridman (03:01.280)
And until I saw you on another podcast
Lex Fridman (03:04.920)
and you said you were Russian, did I call you back?
Dan Gable (03:08.440)
Then it was over.
Lex Fridman (03:09.400)
Because Russia to me, you know,
Dan Gable (03:11.080)
is leading the world in wrestling almost every year.
Lex Fridman (03:14.920)
What's the difference between American wrestling
Lex Fridman (03:16.560)
and Russian wrestling?
Lex Fridman (03:17.400)
You showed me this painting.
Dan Gable (03:18.600)
Well, it's MIT, it's science.
Lex Fridman (03:20.640)
It's science.
Lex Fridman (03:21.480)
And they really study the sport.
Lex Fridman (03:24.840)
They're really good technically.
Dan Gable (03:26.120)
They're really, really good in strategy.
Lex Fridman (03:28.680)
They don't really push like the real toughness.
Dan Gable (03:32.120)
They don't push like conditioning.
Lex Fridman (03:35.440)
And so Americans, we need what they have.
Dan Gable (03:38.760)
Russians need what we have.
Lex Fridman (03:40.880)
And when you get the two together.
Lex Fridman (03:43.680)
And for me, why I could beat the Russians
Lex Fridman (03:46.560)
is because I went their way a little bit.
Lex Fridman (03:50.160)
But I kept my toughness.
Lex Fridman (03:52.600)
But you're known, you're known for your toughness.
Dan Gable (03:56.080)
Yeah, but I wasn't known for my art.
Lex Fridman (03:59.040)
I wasn't known for my science.
Lex Fridman (04:00.960)
So when did you become a bit of an artist?
Lex Fridman (04:02.960)
It took a loss.
Dan Gable (04:04.720)
The Larry Owens loss.
Lex Fridman (04:05.560)
Most people thought I was already an artist
Dan Gable (04:07.680)
just because I won 181 straight matches in seven years.
Lex Fridman (04:11.440)
And not just winning, but you know,
Dan Gable (04:13.160)
kind of punishing people.
Lex Fridman (04:16.040)
And from that point of view,
Dan Gable (04:17.960)
yeah, I might've been pretty good,
Lex Fridman (04:19.240)
but I had a long ways to go yet.
Lex Fridman (04:21.280)
And I didn't really realize that,
Lex Fridman (04:23.640)
or I should say, I didn't really know
Lex Fridman (04:27.080)
how to get it out of me until I had a loss.
Lex Fridman (04:29.280)
And then I realized I gotta buckle down,
Dan Gable (04:31.480)
learn some of that science, become more of an artist.
Lex Fridman (04:34.480)
How do you become an artist?
Lex Fridman (04:35.520)
So the Russian way has this drilling technique,
Lex Fridman (04:41.320)
thousands of reps.
Lex Fridman (04:42.720)
How do you think you work on the science, the art part?
Lex Fridman (04:46.680)
You gotta study the best in the world.
Dan Gable (04:49.800)
I think Dave Schultz was our guy in America
Lex Fridman (04:53.360)
that probably showed us that being artistic,
Dan Gable (04:58.440)
you needed that.
Lex Fridman (04:59.440)
And he studied it.
Dan Gable (05:00.400)
He went over there as a high schooler
Lex Fridman (05:02.600)
and rustled in some major tournaments over there.
Lex Fridman (05:04.920)
And he saw their ways.
Lex Fridman (05:08.160)
He used that Russian science
Lex Fridman (05:09.920)
and then he was already an American
Lex Fridman (05:12.680)
and he saw how I trained athletes.
Dan Gable (05:15.960)
He saw what I did in the Olympics,
Lex Fridman (05:17.680)
saw what other people, how we held up,
Lex Fridman (05:20.320)
and he applied that as well.
Lex Fridman (05:21.880)
But I'd have to say he was more the artistic type.
Dan Gable (05:25.120)
He was more of a Russian than an American
Lex Fridman (05:27.120)
when it came to wrestling.
Dan Gable (05:30.480)
You've coached 45 national champions,
Lex Fridman (05:33.280)
106 Big Ten champions, and eight Olympic medalists,
Dan Gable (05:37.760)
which is incredible.
Lex Fridman (05:39.560)
What is a common thread between them
Lex Fridman (05:42.640)
and what are maybe some of the fundamental differences?
Lex Fridman (05:47.440)
I think the common thread is that
Dan Gable (05:53.640)
they all had one of those two avenues
Lex Fridman (05:56.280)
that we talked already
Lex Fridman (05:59.040)
and because we intertwined them.
Lex Fridman (06:02.120)
So in a Russian wrestling room, they got the same people.
Dan Gable (06:05.360)
Most of the time in an American wrestling room,
Lex Fridman (06:07.080)
we had the same people.
Lex Fridman (06:08.520)
But when I was out recruiting,
Lex Fridman (06:10.600)
at first I recruited just attitude,
Lex Fridman (06:15.080)
but I needed more than that.
Lex Fridman (06:16.800)
I needed some genetics in that wrestling room
Dan Gable (06:21.360)
to actually, that hard work people,
Lex Fridman (06:25.480)
they could look and see, wow,
Dan Gable (06:29.240)
that execution, that's unbelievable.
Lex Fridman (06:32.800)
But yet I can beat that guy after the first minute.
Lex Fridman (06:37.360)
So you think the art, the technique is genetics.
Lex Fridman (06:42.600)
You're born with it.
Dan Gable (06:43.760)
You think it's not something.
Lex Fridman (06:44.600)
I think your pop and your ability to move.
Dan Gable (06:48.440)
Timing.
Lex Fridman (06:49.280)
And timing and your quickness and your strength.
Dan Gable (06:53.520)
The Russians, they usually picked out
Lex Fridman (06:59.200)
the people that can go into that sport.
Dan Gable (07:01.760)
That was the old fashioned sports school.
Lex Fridman (07:04.120)
But it's mostly like when you walk into a Russian
Dan Gable (07:07.920)
wrestling room, you see them hitting skills, techniques.
Lex Fridman (07:12.200)
You don't see them banging against each other that much.
Lex Fridman (07:15.480)
But then when practice is over,
Lex Fridman (07:17.120)
you might not see a bunch of sprints.
Dan Gable (07:18.920)
You might see them walk over to the ropes
Lex Fridman (07:22.760)
and they drop down from the ceiling
Lex Fridman (07:25.160)
and they'll jump up and climb a rope, boom, boom, boom.
Lex Fridman (07:28.160)
And then they come down and then they don't jump
Dan Gable (07:30.680)
right back on.
Lex Fridman (07:31.680)
They have three or four other guys go
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and then they jump back on.
Lex Fridman (07:34.760)
Whereas I probably made my guys climb them,
Dan Gable (07:38.040)
get right back down, climb them right back again.
Lex Fridman (07:40.920)
But I also realized that I had to have a mix of that.
Lex Fridman (07:46.720)
What was the role?
Lex Fridman (07:47.560)
What was your role?
Dan Gable (07:48.520)
I mean, those guys looked up and Dan Gable
Lex Fridman (07:51.080)
and what was the role in helping these athletes
Lex Fridman (07:53.600)
become their best?
Lex Fridman (07:54.760)
These national champions.
Dan Gable (07:55.600)
Well, you had to first of all prove that you were,
Lex Fridman (07:58.920)
knew what you were doing.
Lex Fridman (08:00.360)
In terms of technique or in terms of hard work?
Lex Fridman (08:02.400)
Everything, everything.
Dan Gable (08:03.560)
They just, you had to be the first guy there
Lex Fridman (08:05.640)
and the last guy to leave
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and you had to be the most dedicated guy,
Lex Fridman (08:08.400)
even though they were the ones that's trying to
Dan Gable (08:10.160)
win the championships.
Lex Fridman (08:11.960)
You had to prove that you were gonna work just as hard
Dan Gable (08:14.440)
as they were as a coach.
Lex Fridman (08:15.920)
And what does that look like?
Lex Fridman (08:17.240)
So you can see it when you, you know it when you see it?
Lex Fridman (08:20.120)
Well, you're there ahead of them
Lex Fridman (08:22.200)
and you're there after they leave.
Lex Fridman (08:25.360)
It's that simple.
Dan Gable (08:26.760)
I'm picking up after them and you're analyzing them.
Lex Fridman (08:29.880)
You outwork them, you outwork them and you outthink them.
Lex Fridman (08:34.360)
And so, you know, use that type of strategy.
Lex Fridman (08:36.200)
And over time, when you prove it works,
Dan Gable (08:39.800)
because some of my kids that were the best kids
Lex Fridman (08:43.720)
in the world really shouldn't have been a wrestler.
Dan Gable (08:49.560)
I mean, they weren't very coordinated,
Lex Fridman (08:53.000)
but they worked so hard to develop themselves.
Lex Fridman (08:56.880)
What was your role in that process?
Lex Fridman (08:58.360)
I mean, that means pushing kids to their limit.
Dan Gable (09:01.560)
If you're not...
Lex Fridman (09:02.920)
Yeah, but you can't push kids to their limit.
Lex Fridman (09:04.640)
And even when you push them to their limit,
Lex Fridman (09:06.440)
that's not their limit
Dan Gable (09:07.760)
because their limit's above and beyond that.
Lex Fridman (09:09.600)
I mean, yeah, coaches sometimes accidentally don't,
Dan Gable (09:14.040)
they lose kids because of the heat,
Lex Fridman (09:16.760)
because of hard work and all that.
Lex Fridman (09:19.040)
And you gotta know when to back off.
Lex Fridman (09:22.640)
You gotta read your athletes.
Lex Fridman (09:24.520)
And by that, I mean, you gotta know them pretty well.
Lex Fridman (09:28.120)
Every once in a while, you make a little bit of a mistake,
Lex Fridman (09:30.080)
but if you don't react right on that mistake
Lex Fridman (09:32.080)
before it gets too far, then it's gonna be a casualty.
Lex Fridman (09:35.520)
And I don't mean somebody dying necessarily,
Lex Fridman (09:38.000)
but maybe something that could turn them off
Dan Gable (09:40.800)
or maybe something that could run them away
Lex Fridman (09:43.200)
or maybe something that, wow, that was close.
Dan Gable (09:46.800)
Maybe shouldn't have pushed them that far.
Lex Fridman (09:49.000)
So you really have to be very educated.
Lex Fridman (09:51.600)
And it's not just what you know,
Lex Fridman (09:54.600)
it's what you know about them.
Lex Fridman (09:56.320)
And I'm not talking about the team.
Lex Fridman (09:57.880)
I'm talking about each guy on the team.
Dan Gable (09:59.280)
Individuals, yeah.
Lex Fridman (10:00.120)
Yeah, each person on the team.
Lex Fridman (10:01.320)
And you know it how?
Lex Fridman (10:03.400)
You see it in their eyes?
Dan Gable (10:04.240)
You know it how because you're the first one there
Lex Fridman (10:06.880)
and you're the last one to leave
Lex Fridman (10:08.160)
and you set in the environment with them.
Lex Fridman (10:10.700)
You're there in the morning for practice sometimes.
Dan Gable (10:13.240)
You're there in the afternoon for two or three hours.
Lex Fridman (10:15.280)
After practice, you might have a hot room
Dan Gable (10:18.440)
or you might have a sauna or a steam or a whirlpool
Lex Fridman (10:21.680)
and you get in there with them and you listen.
Dan Gable (10:25.160)
You're not just feeding out information.
Lex Fridman (10:28.080)
You do that, but you're taking in a lot of that too.
Lex Fridman (10:31.120)
And I'm telling you, when you get in an atmosphere
Lex Fridman (10:33.720)
that they're relaxed and they feel comfortable,
Dan Gable (10:36.560)
it's like a massage.
Lex Fridman (10:38.600)
And that's after practice in one of those areas
Dan Gable (10:41.560)
that people are around you, you learn a lot.
Lex Fridman (10:44.440)
I mean, you got a lot to learn as a coach.
Lex Fridman (10:46.480)
And when you get in that atmosphere,
Lex Fridman (10:48.060)
when all of a sudden you feel like very comfortable,
Dan Gable (10:52.320)
words start flowing.
Lex Fridman (10:54.240)
And when those words flow, you take them in as a coach.
Lex Fridman (10:59.480)
And there's something probably gonna be said
Lex Fridman (11:02.280)
that you can do and act upon
Dan Gable (11:04.080)
that's gonna help certain situations.
Lex Fridman (11:07.320)
I've saved a couple of kids lives for sure
Dan Gable (11:09.880)
that were on the brink.
Lex Fridman (11:11.480)
Sometimes performance is at such a high level
Dan Gable (11:14.120)
in a high level atmosphere
Lex Fridman (11:17.960)
that life and death is actually involved.
Lex Fridman (11:21.520)
And I don't mean pushing a kid to where he just dies,
Lex Fridman (11:24.480)
but I mean, he might feel himself as a failure.
Dan Gable (11:28.040)
He might go home and take his own life.
Lex Fridman (11:30.360)
Yeah, I mean, but that's part of it.
Dan Gable (11:31.840)
You're putting so much heart,
Lex Fridman (11:34.320)
so much blood and heart and sweat
Lex Fridman (11:36.080)
and your whole meaning of life becomes winning.
Lex Fridman (11:39.520)
So, and sometimes it's so hard to lose within that context.
Lex Fridman (11:43.600)
So if in your, I think the first wrestling life
Lex Fridman (11:47.080)
you wrote about Chad Zapato who lost,
Dan Gable (11:51.320)
I mean, incredible wrestler,
Lex Fridman (11:52.880)
but lost in three finals in the nationals
Lex Fridman (11:55.440)
and has this tattoo of a hawk clawing out the human heart.
Lex Fridman (11:59.960)
Yeah, so what lessons, is there any lessons
Dan Gable (12:03.200)
from the incredible wrestling he's done,
Lex Fridman (12:06.580)
but also the incredible suffering that he went through
Lex Fridman (12:10.320)
on himself?
Lex Fridman (12:11.160)
Yeah, again, you like that word suffering, which is okay.
Dan Gable (12:14.880)
Okay, so.
Lex Fridman (12:15.720)
No, no, no, no, no, keep it, keep it.
Dan Gable (12:17.200)
Cause it fits right in where I want.
Lex Fridman (12:19.600)
I have to turn that suffering around
Dan Gable (12:22.720)
to where he makes and feels good about himself
Lex Fridman (12:25.800)
or better, doesn't have to feel perfect.
Lex Fridman (12:29.120)
Cause he did lose, you know?
Lex Fridman (12:31.360)
And so, but you have to actually get him to realize
Dan Gable (12:35.580)
that yeah, he's still unique
Lex Fridman (12:37.460)
compared to the walk of the earth.
Dan Gable (12:38.960)
He was unbelievably unique right at the top,
Lex Fridman (12:41.880)
just a little bit short of,
Lex Fridman (12:43.640)
but because it was, you know, he felt the suffering,
Lex Fridman (12:48.080)
you now have to go about and change that
Lex Fridman (12:50.680)
and put it into goodwill some way.
Lex Fridman (12:52.800)
And because he's, you really have a lot of goodwill,
Dan Gable (12:55.580)
you can do a lot of goodwill.
Lex Fridman (12:57.360)
And so, and it's not easy.
Dan Gable (13:00.640)
It took him probably years, years of tattooing.
Lex Fridman (13:05.800)
Yeah.
Dan Gable (13:06.640)
Years of covering the tattoos.
Lex Fridman (13:09.600)
And, you know, he told me he moved to,
Lex Fridman (13:12.040)
I go, why are you moving to California?
Lex Fridman (13:13.440)
Cause he was here for a couple of years
Dan Gable (13:15.200)
after his wrestling was done, cause he had a good job
Lex Fridman (13:18.160)
around here and he was, I thought he was doing a good job,
Lex Fridman (13:21.280)
but he just, he said, I had to escape, you know?
Lex Fridman (13:24.960)
Yeah, it's the same as the covering up the tattoo.
Dan Gable (13:26.880)
I had a wrestling terminology.
Lex Fridman (13:28.160)
I have to get, I hate to say this, I hate to say this.
Lex Fridman (13:32.120)
I go, where are you going?
Lex Fridman (13:33.800)
He said, I'm gonna go to California.
Lex Fridman (13:37.000)
And I go, is there any reason why you're going to California?
Lex Fridman (13:40.000)
And he says, that's where everybody goes to hide.
Lex Fridman (13:48.720)
But I said, I think you're wrong there,
Lex Fridman (13:51.160)
but you know, I think what will determine your life
Lex Fridman (13:55.060)
will be what you do from now on, you know?
Lex Fridman (13:57.400)
And if you can find, and he's actually turned it around.
Dan Gable (14:00.200)
I mean, he's actually turned it around.
Lex Fridman (14:01.400)
You have to discover that yourself.
Dan Gable (14:02.840)
Exactly, and he went someplace
Lex Fridman (14:04.240)
that he thought he could fit into, and I think he did.
Lex Fridman (14:08.980)
And I think he's got a good job, and he's helping people,
Lex Fridman (14:11.640)
and he covered that tattoo with feathers, another tattoo.
Dan Gable (14:18.440)
Well, in the end, it's a beautiful story.
Lex Fridman (14:20.520)
Yeah, it is, it really is.
Dan Gable (14:21.560)
Suffering and overcoming.
Lex Fridman (14:22.960)
Yeah, and he's not done yet.
Dan Gable (14:25.140)
He's not done yet.
Lex Fridman (14:25.980)
No, he's not done.
Dan Gable (14:26.820)
He's got a lot more to do.
Lex Fridman (14:29.840)
So you mentioned Roger Bannister,
Dan Gable (14:32.560)
again, I think in your first book,
Lex Fridman (14:34.640)
and somebody you looked up to,
Lex Fridman (14:36.480)
that's the man who broke the four minute mile, right?
Lex Fridman (14:40.080)
When everybody said it was impossible,
Dan Gable (14:42.000)
everyone thought it was impossible.
Lex Fridman (14:43.400)
Oh, they thought he would die.
Dan Gable (14:44.620)
He would die.
Lex Fridman (14:45.460)
It's not humanly possible, yeah.
Lex Fridman (14:47.940)
So what?
Lex Fridman (14:49.080)
Well, you've done your homework.
Lex Fridman (14:50.800)
For what, the book, or what?
Lex Fridman (14:51.920)
Oh, I don't know, for me, you've done your homework.
Dan Gable (14:53.600)
Yeah, I know, but yeah.
Lex Fridman (14:54.880)
What?
Dan Gable (14:55.720)
I was sitting here by Putin to do research, yeah.
Lex Fridman (14:59.480)
So what lesson do you take from that story for yourself,
Lex Fridman (15:03.040)
the impossible, trying to accomplish the impossible?
Lex Fridman (15:05.880)
Well, the impossible is possible.
Dan Gable (15:08.560)
It's just that simple.
Lex Fridman (15:10.320)
Time changes things.
Dan Gable (15:12.040)
I mean, if you looked at where the mile time is right now,
Lex Fridman (15:18.440)
compared to that four minute mile,
Dan Gable (15:20.560)
which when it was broke by a couple of tenths,
Lex Fridman (15:23.120)
or three or four tenths,
Dan Gable (15:25.500)
it's now broke by another 20 seconds.
Lex Fridman (15:30.520)
Yeah, by several hundred people, yeah.
Dan Gable (15:32.920)
Yeah, I mean, by tons of people.
Lex Fridman (15:35.200)
And it's pretty much common knowledge
Dan Gable (15:37.480)
that you gotta run a four minute mile
Lex Fridman (15:38.680)
if you're gonna go somewhere now,
Dan Gable (15:39.920)
or below if you're gonna win events at major level,
Lex Fridman (15:43.960)
that you gotta be able to do that.
Lex Fridman (15:45.760)
And so you can take that,
Lex Fridman (15:47.520)
and you can look at what in time history
Dan Gable (15:53.360)
has as its record performance,
Lex Fridman (15:58.040)
and you can realize that that record performance,
Dan Gable (16:01.640)
it's gonna change.
Lex Fridman (16:02.600)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (16:03.420)
And they don't take into all the factors of knowledge.
Lex Fridman (16:08.320)
They don't take in all the factors of better shoes.
Dan Gable (16:12.480)
They don't take in all the factors
Lex Fridman (16:13.840)
of better understanding of nutrition.
Dan Gable (16:16.920)
I mean, it's like me as an athlete.
Lex Fridman (16:21.680)
I went to practice every day in high school
Dan Gable (16:23.700)
for at least my sophomore, and my junior,
Lex Fridman (16:27.720)
and part of my senior year,
Lex Fridman (16:29.960)
and all of a sudden a new rule came up.
Lex Fridman (16:33.760)
It said, the rule said before that,
Dan Gable (16:37.360)
it said at least most of the coaches,
Lex Fridman (16:43.160)
we don't want you drinking water at practice.
Dan Gable (16:45.560)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (16:46.400)
And okay, why?
Dan Gable (16:48.960)
Because you gotta toughen you up.
Lex Fridman (16:50.440)
That's a weakness, water.
Lex Fridman (16:53.320)
And so we would go through practice.
Lex Fridman (16:55.280)
I mean, and you're sweating,
Lex Fridman (16:56.600)
and then you're sweating so much
Lex Fridman (16:57.800)
that you're almost out of sweat.
Dan Gable (16:59.600)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (17:00.440)
And so you're mostly at the end of practice,
Dan Gable (17:02.800)
you're not even wrestling.
Lex Fridman (17:04.560)
Excuse me.
Dan Gable (17:05.400)
You're setting against the wall.
Lex Fridman (17:06.800)
Yeah.
Dan Gable (17:07.640)
Because you're tired.
Lex Fridman (17:08.460)
So then all of a sudden they say,
Dan Gable (17:10.600)
okay, go ahead and drink water during practice,
Lex Fridman (17:12.920)
drink greater aid during practice.
Lex Fridman (17:14.360)
And all of a sudden at the end of practice,
Lex Fridman (17:16.200)
we're still out there competing.
Lex Fridman (17:18.160)
And so I look at my career for two and a half years
Lex Fridman (17:21.120)
where I, and junior high too.
Lex Fridman (17:23.960)
So I got another three years
Lex Fridman (17:25.360)
where I didn't really, wasn't able to push
Dan Gable (17:28.800)
as good as I could because I just was probably under.
Lex Fridman (17:32.480)
Under hydrated.
Dan Gable (17:33.320)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (17:34.140)
Yeah.
Dan Gable (17:34.980)
So, but at the individual level,
Lex Fridman (17:37.040)
in terms of the impossible,
Dan Gable (17:38.760)
when did you first believe the thing
Lex Fridman (17:41.400)
that maybe probably people would laugh at you about
Lex Fridman (17:43.680)
was that you would be an Olympic champion?
Lex Fridman (17:46.600)
Well, I always visualized me being the best.
Dan Gable (17:50.880)
You believed it in the very beginning.
Lex Fridman (17:52.040)
Forever, forever.
Dan Gable (17:53.720)
Yeah, I was, because I was,
Lex Fridman (17:55.800)
I don't know if you'd call it a dreamer or somebody that,
Dan Gable (17:59.200)
I was just involved with competitive sports
Lex Fridman (18:01.800)
at the YMCA from age five.
Dan Gable (18:05.120)
Did you tell people that dream
Lex Fridman (18:06.600)
that you're gonna be Olympic champion one day?
Lex Fridman (18:08.960)
You're gonna be the best in the world?
Lex Fridman (18:10.280)
I think they knew.
Lex Fridman (18:12.200)
And the only reason why they knew,
Lex Fridman (18:13.440)
cause there was something a little different
Dan Gable (18:15.080)
about this guy.
Lex Fridman (18:15.920)
He was.
Dan Gable (18:17.640)
He's not gonna stop.
Lex Fridman (18:18.480)
Well, he was out in the yard.
Dan Gable (18:20.080)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (18:20.920)
And he was swinging baseball bats.
Dan Gable (18:22.200)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (18:23.040)
He was swinging baseball at six, at seven,
Lex Fridman (18:24.440)
and eight, and nine, and 10.
Lex Fridman (18:26.400)
And he was swinging baseball bats,
Lex Fridman (18:29.200)
so much right handed and so much left hand
Lex Fridman (18:31.480)
with nobody even there throwing the ball.
Dan Gable (18:33.480)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (18:34.840)
That all of a sudden when they walked by,
Dan Gable (18:36.760)
all of a sudden the grass was down to dirt
Lex Fridman (18:39.760)
on both sides.
Dan Gable (18:40.600)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (18:41.440)
So it's like, they saw me out in the yard
Dan Gable (18:45.640)
playing by myself sports,
Lex Fridman (18:48.280)
or you get the neighborhood kids and you play a lot.
Lex Fridman (18:51.800)
But if they weren't there,
Lex Fridman (18:53.920)
if you walked in my front room,
Dan Gable (18:55.560)
I was hiking a ball like I was the quarterback.
Lex Fridman (18:58.120)
And I was running and running through the furniture,
Dan Gable (19:02.320)
that type stuff.
Lex Fridman (19:03.160)
So who saw this guy mostly was probably the parents.
Dan Gable (19:08.520)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (19:09.360)
And the coaches at the YMCA level,
Dan Gable (19:11.640)
the junior high level,
Lex Fridman (19:12.640)
they saw this guy come first and end up last.
Lex Fridman (19:15.400)
But I wasn't that great.
Lex Fridman (19:18.560)
I wasn't the fastest guy at that time.
Lex Fridman (19:21.160)
And I wasn't the strongest guy.
Lex Fridman (19:24.440)
Actually, before I went to the Olympics,
Dan Gable (19:25.880)
when they tested me, they tested everybody.
Lex Fridman (19:28.120)
And I probably came back with one of the highest scores,
Lex Fridman (19:31.000)
but it was not like the highest person on this
Lex Fridman (19:36.960)
and this and that.
Dan Gable (19:38.320)
I was all high across the board,
Lex Fridman (19:40.320)
straight across the board high on every one of them.
Lex Fridman (19:43.120)
But there was always people that were higher than me.
Lex Fridman (19:45.800)
Genetics.
Lex Fridman (19:46.640)
But then they would go down.
Lex Fridman (19:47.960)
Yeah.
Dan Gable (19:48.800)
Then they would test on something else and go back up.
Lex Fridman (19:50.480)
Mine stayed high all across the board.
Lex Fridman (19:53.080)
And so I really didn't have too many flaws,
Lex Fridman (19:56.120)
but I didn't have any things that also said
Dan Gable (19:58.640)
that you were gonna be unscored upon at the Olympic games.
Lex Fridman (1:00:00.720)
I had so much success
Lex Fridman (1:00:04.960)
and so many practices that went well
Lex Fridman (1:00:09.280)
and so much goodness out of this sport
Dan Gable (1:00:14.080)
that it gave me the opportunity to really look more finite
Lex Fridman (1:00:21.440)
and look more how I can even make it better.
Lex Fridman (1:00:23.880)
And so it's like, if you look at my library upstairs,
Lex Fridman (1:00:27.760)
I got a library upstairs
Lex Fridman (1:00:30.840)
and there's a lot of books up there from the family.
Lex Fridman (1:00:35.880)
But if you look at the Gable books up there,
Dan Gable (1:00:39.320)
I got a lot of Russian technique books.
Lex Fridman (1:00:42.360)
I can't read the book, but I can see the diagrams
Lex Fridman (1:00:49.400)
and I can see the figures.
Lex Fridman (1:00:52.120)
They don't really show it in pictures.
Dan Gable (1:00:54.200)
They do it in drawings.
Lex Fridman (1:00:56.920)
And so it was like when I was trying to beat the best
Dan Gable (1:01:01.420)
that has labeled the best
Lex Fridman (1:01:04.040)
because they win the world championships every year
Dan Gable (1:01:07.120)
since they've been just about involved.
Lex Fridman (1:01:09.920)
And I don't think they got started involved
Dan Gable (1:01:11.440)
till like the fifties, but it's something,
Lex Fridman (1:01:16.320)
you study the best who's out there,
Lex Fridman (1:01:19.640)
but then you don't focus so much on the best
Lex Fridman (1:01:23.680)
that you can't beat the best.
Dan Gable (1:01:25.720)
You learn from them,
Lex Fridman (1:01:27.560)
but there's something that they don't have
Dan Gable (1:01:31.300)
that you can have.
Lex Fridman (1:01:32.960)
Toughness to technique, to the art, to the science.
Dan Gable (1:01:36.600)
Yeah, all that stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:01:37.660)
And that's why I even talking to you
Lex Fridman (1:01:39.380)
and you're sitting over there and you love MIT
Lex Fridman (1:01:41.680)
and you're bragging about it over Harvard.
Dan Gable (1:01:45.920)
Cause it's true.
Lex Fridman (1:01:47.640)
In your eyes and that's great.
Lex Fridman (1:01:50.000)
And it might be, but it's the same type of thing
Lex Fridman (1:01:54.100)
that there's something that you're probably stealing
Dan Gable (1:01:57.680)
from Harvard, but you won't give them credit.
Lex Fridman (1:02:01.120)
Well, Dan, in the interest of time,
Dan Gable (1:02:05.200)
I've read that you're pretty serious.
Lex Fridman (1:02:07.240)
You're pretty seriously into fishing.
Lex Fridman (1:02:10.000)
So what's the biggest fish you ever caught?
Lex Fridman (1:02:15.640)
What are we talking about here?
Lex Fridman (1:02:16.840)
What are we talking about?
Lex Fridman (1:02:18.040)
No, I don't think I've ever caught a big ocean fish.
Dan Gable (1:02:22.140)
I'm not, I'm a river lake fisherman.
Lex Fridman (1:02:24.140)
I have fish in the...
Lex Fridman (1:02:25.640)
Trout?
Lex Fridman (1:02:26.480)
No, probably Northern.
Dan Gable (1:02:30.000)
I probably caught a Northern that weighed 20 some pounds.
Lex Fridman (1:02:35.600)
The fish I like to catch is walleyes.
Lex Fridman (1:02:37.600)
And the reason why I like to catch them
Lex Fridman (1:02:39.320)
cause they're really good eating fish.
Lex Fridman (1:02:41.760)
And the best eating fish are not the real big ones.
Lex Fridman (1:02:44.300)
It's kind of interesting.
Dan Gable (1:02:47.820)
I got people hunting deer right on my land
Lex Fridman (1:02:50.060)
and they're looking for the big bucks,
Lex Fridman (1:02:52.260)
but they're not the best eaters if you want to eat,
Lex Fridman (1:02:54.840)
but they're the best trophy.
Lex Fridman (1:02:56.260)
So I do have a couple of trophy walleyes on the wall,
Lex Fridman (1:02:59.460)
but most of the time I throw the big ones back
Lex Fridman (1:03:03.060)
and put them back in there.
Lex Fridman (1:03:05.020)
I don't know if you know there's a book by Hemingway
Dan Gable (1:03:07.300)
called Old Man in the Sea.
Lex Fridman (1:03:09.580)
Heard of it.
Lex Fridman (1:03:11.300)
Ernest Hemingway?
Lex Fridman (1:03:12.120)
Ernest Hemingway, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:03:13.740)
And there's an old man that basically
Lex Fridman (1:03:17.580)
catches an 18 footer, but it can't pull it in,
Dan Gable (1:03:19.800)
doesn't have the strength.
Lex Fridman (1:03:20.640)
So they together spend while the sharks eat away at it.
Dan Gable (1:03:24.380)
I mean, this is very powerful story.
Lex Fridman (1:03:26.580)
I think one of the Nobel Prize,
Lex Fridman (1:03:27.860)
but he says, it's better to be lucky.
Lex Fridman (1:03:30.940)
The old man says, it's better to be lucky,
Lex Fridman (1:03:33.220)
but I would rather be exact that way
Lex Fridman (1:03:36.820)
when luck comes, you're ready.
Lex Fridman (1:03:38.740)
So let me ask, what do you think about luck?
Lex Fridman (1:03:43.300)
Do you believe in free will that we have actions
Dan Gable (1:03:47.180)
that control the direction, destination of our life,
Lex Fridman (1:03:49.980)
or does luck and some other outside forces
Lex Fridman (1:03:53.620)
really land you where you end up?
Lex Fridman (1:03:57.780)
For me, I'm not about luck,
Lex Fridman (1:04:00.480)
but I do think luck is involved.
Lex Fridman (1:04:04.960)
But I think it's mostly created,
Dan Gable (1:04:07.900)
just how lucky you are through preparations.
Lex Fridman (1:04:11.020)
And things have happened in my life forever,
Lex Fridman (1:04:16.540)
and a lot of good things.
Lex Fridman (1:04:18.340)
And a lot of people could say,
Dan Gable (1:04:19.580)
hey, you've been pretty lucky to win all these awards.
Lex Fridman (1:04:22.780)
I don't know, if you analyze my life,
Dan Gable (1:04:27.180)
I don't think it was involved with luck.
Lex Fridman (1:04:29.840)
I think it was more involved with preparation.
Lex Fridman (1:04:32.100)
And again, science, had you been smarter,
Lex Fridman (1:04:36.100)
had you understood that you could do some things
Lex Fridman (1:04:39.820)
and be just as lucky, that'd be great.
Lex Fridman (1:04:42.020)
But I'm only as smart as today.
Lex Fridman (1:04:46.300)
So when I was training in my life,
Lex Fridman (1:04:48.280)
and me even training people in my life,
Dan Gable (1:04:52.460)
as of that moment, that's how lucky I am
Lex Fridman (1:04:54.860)
to be able to have whatever is available to me.
Lex Fridman (1:05:00.140)
And that's what, you call that a lot of science.
Lex Fridman (1:05:01.860)
So for me, I think that, like right now, if I look back,
Dan Gable (1:05:07.060)
I do a lot of things different,
Lex Fridman (1:05:09.300)
just because things are proven differently.
Dan Gable (1:05:12.740)
Like I'd give people water during practice, and I did.
Lex Fridman (1:05:17.380)
And I would let them change their wrestling shoes
Dan Gable (1:05:20.100)
into running shoes to run sprints on the concrete.
Lex Fridman (1:05:23.460)
Or I would actually, maybe I've had a guy climb 12 ropes
Dan Gable (1:05:27.980)
after practice, one after another.
Lex Fridman (1:05:30.360)
And then maybe the next day I'd do it again.
Dan Gable (1:05:32.460)
Ah, I might not make him do it the next day.
Lex Fridman (1:05:35.200)
I might let him recover a little bit more.
Lex Fridman (1:05:38.180)
And you gotta learn, keep adding to your philosophy.
Lex Fridman (1:05:43.660)
And your philosophy may have been great at that time,
Lex Fridman (1:05:46.540)
but it's at that time.
Lex Fridman (1:05:48.460)
And what is really important is where you at
Dan Gable (1:05:51.500)
with this time, today.
Lex Fridman (1:05:53.900)
And so there's better ways to do things.
Dan Gable (1:05:56.420)
Now, if you ever take attitude out of it,
Lex Fridman (1:05:59.040)
and just depend on total science,
Dan Gable (1:06:03.300)
then you're not gonna be as,
Lex Fridman (1:06:05.040)
as you know, I think as I listened to a couple people
Dan Gable (1:06:08.720)
that are really pretty famous people.
Lex Fridman (1:06:11.640)
One of them was John Irving.
Dan Gable (1:06:13.040)
He was a writer.
Lex Fridman (1:06:15.080)
And he told me, he says,
Dan Gable (1:06:16.360)
you think I really learned how to be a great writer
Lex Fridman (1:06:21.200)
in writing school?
Dan Gable (1:06:26.920)
He said, yeah, I learned a lot there.
Lex Fridman (1:06:29.680)
But really what gave me the ability to stay focused,
Dan Gable (1:06:35.440)
to work extra hours, to be more disciplined,
Lex Fridman (1:06:38.680)
was wrestling practices.
Dan Gable (1:06:41.240)
That's right, he was a wrestler, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:06:42.800)
Yeah, he goes, I go back to that.
Dan Gable (1:06:44.720)
That's what gave me that chance.
Lex Fridman (1:06:47.400)
And there's a guy in Iowa, that guy named Norman Borlaug.
Dan Gable (1:06:52.400)
He learned, he invented a process
Lex Fridman (1:06:57.640)
to feed the underprivileged countries of the world.
Lex Fridman (1:07:02.420)
And he was a wrestler, and he said the same thing.
Lex Fridman (1:07:06.680)
And he worked extremely hard.
Lex Fridman (1:07:08.720)
And he said, I give a lot of credit
Lex Fridman (1:07:11.200)
to the sport of wrestling.
Lex Fridman (1:07:13.120)
And even though I'm known for this,
Lex Fridman (1:07:15.400)
and I got a statue in Washington, DC,
Dan Gable (1:07:18.340)
because I saved a billion lives plus,
Lex Fridman (1:07:21.340)
I'm gonna give wrestling a lot of credit.
Lex Fridman (1:07:23.800)
So I think some of these MMA stars
Lex Fridman (1:07:29.440)
and some of these guys that maybe weren't wrestlers,
Dan Gable (1:07:32.940)
that had to wrestle, had to fight wrestling guys and stuff,
Lex Fridman (1:07:36.760)
missed a little bit there.
Lex Fridman (1:07:38.280)
But I think the ones that did have wrestling
Lex Fridman (1:07:40.560)
probably have a really good chance
Lex Fridman (1:07:41.920)
and can adapt to the other ones.
Lex Fridman (1:07:43.480)
But I think every martial art or every activity is good,
Lex Fridman (1:07:48.320)
and you probably can't skip any.
Lex Fridman (1:07:49.800)
But I don't think they're ever gonna overlook
Lex Fridman (1:07:51.920)
and say that wrestling's not valuable, because it is.
Lex Fridman (1:07:58.720)
However, that doesn't mean you're gonna make it.
Dan Gable (1:08:00.560)
You still gotta take the values and apply it,
Lex Fridman (1:08:03.400)
whatever area you're gonna be in.
Lex Fridman (1:08:05.640)
And some people forget that.
Lex Fridman (1:08:07.400)
Some people can't get over the highness
Dan Gable (1:08:12.180)
of getting your arm raised in a wrestling match.
Lex Fridman (1:08:15.400)
And you know what?
Dan Gable (1:08:16.440)
What's even greater than me getting my arm raised
Lex Fridman (1:08:20.080)
is that if I'm a coach or if I belong with you,
Dan Gable (1:08:23.300)
that you get your arm raised.
Lex Fridman (1:08:25.520)
And even if you don't get your arm raised,
Dan Gable (1:08:27.360)
it's what you walk away with
Lex Fridman (1:08:29.200)
and how you learn to handle that as well.
Dan Gable (1:08:33.840)
Because there's gonna be some losses,
Lex Fridman (1:08:35.820)
but you don't want many.
Dan Gable (1:08:37.720)
Because you don't wanna get used to losing,
Lex Fridman (1:08:39.580)
I can tell you that.
Lex Fridman (1:08:40.520)
So it's the hunger for the win.
Lex Fridman (1:08:42.240)
It's the brotherhood, the sisterhood of the wrestling room.
Lex Fridman (1:08:45.320)
And it's hard work and science
Lex Fridman (1:08:46.960)
that's gonna beat luck at the end of the day.
Dan Gable (1:08:49.920)
Absolutely, that luck, I like luck,
Lex Fridman (1:08:54.500)
but I think it's created by the opportunity that...
Dan Gable (1:08:57.920)
You make your luck.
Lex Fridman (1:08:58.880)
You make your luck, yeah.
Dan Gable (1:09:00.120)
Dan, it was a huge honor.
Lex Fridman (1:09:01.960)
Thank you for welcoming me into your home
Lex Fridman (1:09:03.840)
and for having this conversation.
Lex Fridman (1:09:05.060)
Yeah, no problem.
Dan Gable (1:09:06.240)
Good man.
Lex Fridman (1:09:07.840)
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Dan Gable.
Lex Fridman (1:09:10.400)
And thank you to our sponsors, Trio Labs,
Lex Fridman (1:09:13.080)
a machine learning company, ExpressVPN,
Dan Gable (1:09:16.120)
Grammarly writing helper tool,
Lex Fridman (1:09:18.680)
and SimpliSafe Home Security.
Lex Fridman (1:09:21.220)
So the choice is artificial intelligence,
Lex Fridman (1:09:23.920)
privacy, grammar, or safety.
Dan Gable (1:09:27.120)
Choose wisely, my friends.
Lex Fridman (1:09:28.600)
And if you wish, click the sponsor links below
Dan Gable (1:09:31.180)
to get a discount and to support this podcast.
Lex Fridman (1:09:34.360)
And now, let me leave you with some words from Dan Gable.
Dan Gable (1:09:38.160)
The first period is won by the best technician.
Lex Fridman (1:09:41.280)
The second period is won by the kid in the best shape.
Lex Fridman (1:09:44.920)
And the third period is won by the kid
Lex Fridman (1:09:47.640)
with the biggest heart.
Dan Gable (1:09:48.740)
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
Lex Fridman (20:02.520)
Right.
Lex Fridman (20:03.360)
So take me through that day, if you could.
Lex Fridman (20:06.080)
1972, when you were going for the 68 kilogram
Dan Gable (20:09.560)
freestyle wrestling gold,
Lex Fridman (20:11.360)
you scored 57 points, if I'm correct,
Lex Fridman (20:15.720)
and had zero points scored on you.
Lex Fridman (20:18.000)
57, zero.
Lex Fridman (20:19.900)
So maybe take me through almost the details.
Lex Fridman (20:24.040)
What was your routine?
Lex Fridman (20:24.960)
What was your process?
Lex Fridman (20:25.920)
What was going through your mind,
Lex Fridman (20:27.400)
your thoughts of that day?
Lex Fridman (20:29.000)
Yeah, first of all, it was quite a day
Dan Gable (20:32.560)
because we weighed in every day at that time.
Lex Fridman (20:36.860)
In the morning?
Dan Gable (20:37.700)
Yeah, we weighed in two hours
Lex Fridman (20:39.000)
before the start of the competition.
Lex Fridman (20:41.120)
And so that didn't mean that you weighed in two hours
Lex Fridman (20:43.440)
before you wrestled,
Dan Gable (20:44.280)
because you didn't know whether you're gonna wrestle
Lex Fridman (20:45.440)
right away or later on.
Dan Gable (20:47.120)
In fact, in that day,
Lex Fridman (20:48.080)
I don't think I wrestled until later on in the evening.
Lex Fridman (20:52.000)
So had all day to recover,
Lex Fridman (20:54.080)
but I didn't really need it anyway,
Dan Gable (20:55.760)
because I wasn't really pulling a whole lot of weight,
Lex Fridman (20:58.920)
but it was just interesting.
Lex Fridman (21:01.680)
But what was in your mind?
Lex Fridman (21:02.600)
What were you thinking?
Lex Fridman (21:03.640)
Were you nervous?
Lex Fridman (21:04.460)
Were you?
Dan Gable (21:05.300)
I was confident.
Lex Fridman (21:06.760)
I was confident.
Dan Gable (21:07.800)
You knew you were gonna win the gold.
Lex Fridman (21:09.300)
Yeah, I knew I was gonna win.
Lex Fridman (21:11.200)
But in reality, I didn't know it
Lex Fridman (21:14.440)
from a cocky point of view.
Dan Gable (21:16.000)
I only knew it because for the last
Lex Fridman (21:20.920)
one, two, three and a half years,
Dan Gable (21:23.560)
I had been going to practice,
Lex Fridman (21:26.960)
and I'd win in every practice.
Dan Gable (21:28.980)
You felt good, you won.
Lex Fridman (21:29.820)
And I hardly ever lose a takedown.
Lex Fridman (21:31.760)
And if I lost, if somebody scored on me,
Lex Fridman (21:35.740)
it was like when I went to bed,
Dan Gable (21:37.860)
I couldn't sleep until I figured it out.
Lex Fridman (21:41.660)
Or if I didn't figure it out,
Dan Gable (21:44.080)
I would fall asleep and I would wake up
Lex Fridman (21:48.480)
with the answer of what I needed,
Lex Fridman (21:50.120)
why I got scored upon.
Lex Fridman (21:51.160)
So maybe now that you've won the gold,
Lex Fridman (21:53.420)
can you tell me in the practice room
Lex Fridman (21:55.040)
when somebody took you down,
Lex Fridman (21:57.080)
how do you take Dan Gable down in the practice room?
Lex Fridman (22:00.200)
Timing, technique?
Dan Gable (22:01.040)
Very difficult, but somebody could,
Lex Fridman (22:04.880)
because they were going for one move.
Dan Gable (22:09.280)
All I wanted was one move.
Lex Fridman (22:10.960)
Whereas if you can arrest somebody,
Dan Gable (22:12.640)
arrest them the whole practice or half a practice
Lex Fridman (22:14.320)
for at least 10, 15 minutes,
Lex Fridman (22:16.440)
and they were maybe gonna score
Lex Fridman (22:21.280)
if they could work it in their mind.
Lex Fridman (22:24.920)
But they knew that was gonna be their victory.
Lex Fridman (22:27.440)
So in the practice room, maybe you can educate me,
Dan Gable (22:31.840)
at that, when you're going for the Olympic gold,
Lex Fridman (22:35.560)
you didn't want to allow any takedowns.
Lex Fridman (22:38.160)
So there's no such thing as working
Lex Fridman (22:39.540)
on some kind of weird position,
Dan Gable (22:41.120)
a weak point or something.
Lex Fridman (22:42.640)
It's important to not let down, take down.
Dan Gable (22:45.680)
It's kind of like what we were saying before.
Lex Fridman (22:47.920)
If something happened and somebody scored on me
Dan Gable (22:50.720)
in a certain way, I would go over that situation,
Lex Fridman (22:54.440)
over that situation, over it again,
Lex Fridman (22:56.880)
and I would come up with an answer.
Lex Fridman (22:58.640)
And then I would actually test it.
Dan Gable (23:01.560)
Maybe I wouldn't go right back the next day
Lex Fridman (23:03.480)
because I didn't want the guy to not have some,
Dan Gable (23:07.120)
I didn't want him to think that I was thinking
Lex Fridman (23:09.200)
about it all night, I didn't tell him.
Lex Fridman (23:11.080)
But maybe three days later when he wrestled again,
Lex Fridman (23:14.100)
I actually had it figured out because he wasn't able to.
Dan Gable (23:20.000)
Or even if I was in on a takedown, an offensive move,
Lex Fridman (23:24.440)
and I got stopped and didn't score,
Dan Gable (23:27.120)
I had to go back and filter that.
Lex Fridman (23:29.920)
But it wasn't something that usually I couldn't solve.
Dan Gable (23:34.160)
I could usually solve it.
Lex Fridman (23:35.740)
Let's go back to the Olympic games.
Lex Fridman (23:37.040)
So I get up in the Olympic in the morning
Lex Fridman (23:39.320)
and I'm not sure when the weigh ins were,
Lex Fridman (23:41.260)
but I think I was probably a pound over.
Lex Fridman (23:45.760)
And that's about a half a kilo and 1.1 pounds is a kilo
Dan Gable (23:49.040)
because we went in kilograms.
Lex Fridman (23:50.240)
So what do you do with that pound?
Lex Fridman (23:51.480)
You aren't off or?
Lex Fridman (23:52.400)
No, I just went over to the, they had a sauna there
Lex Fridman (23:55.720)
and I got in the sauna.
Lex Fridman (23:56.960)
And the funny thing was the morning of the finals,
Dan Gable (24:03.200)
there was another athlete in the sauna.
Lex Fridman (24:06.680)
And it was American or?
Dan Gable (24:10.680)
No, it was a European.
Lex Fridman (24:12.880)
I don't remember where she was from.
Dan Gable (24:14.880)
Not a Russian.
Lex Fridman (24:15.760)
Well, you know what?
Dan Gable (24:16.680)
I kind of think it was a plot because it was a girl.
Lex Fridman (24:22.040)
Interesting.
Lex Fridman (24:22.880)
And she didn't have her top on.
Lex Fridman (24:24.680)
Oh, wow.
Lex Fridman (24:27.200)
And that was pretty common.
Lex Fridman (24:28.640)
And so, you know, it was kind of interesting.
Dan Gable (24:31.040)
You think back about it because there's some funny things
Lex Fridman (24:36.040)
that go on behind the scenes in Olympic games,
Dan Gable (24:40.800)
in world games, anytime when you have country
Lex Fridman (24:43.560)
against country.
Lex Fridman (24:44.520)
And so there's some crazy stuff that goes on.
Lex Fridman (24:47.040)
Did any of it affect you?
Lex Fridman (24:49.120)
Was there any?
Lex Fridman (24:49.960)
Well, I almost stayed too long in the sauna.
Dan Gable (24:51.840)
You lost a little bit over a pound.
Lex Fridman (24:56.240)
I lost a little more than a pound.
Lex Fridman (24:58.160)
But it didn't really bother me
Lex Fridman (25:00.960)
because I wasn't like cutting a lot of weight.
Lex Fridman (25:04.200)
So your match against the Russian, the...
Lex Fridman (25:08.120)
Azhelyov.
Dan Gable (25:08.960)
Yeah, Azhelyov.
Lex Fridman (25:09.880)
He went on to be a two time world champion,
Dan Gable (25:12.040)
a silver medalist as well.
Lex Fridman (25:13.600)
I mean, this is an incredible wrestler.
Lex Fridman (25:15.560)
So what was going through your mind
Lex Fridman (25:18.520)
before stepping on the mat with that guy?
Dan Gable (25:20.600)
You've beaten a bunch of wrestlers,
Lex Fridman (25:22.240)
haven't had a point scored on you.
Lex Fridman (25:24.600)
And you're stepping on the mat against this Russian
Lex Fridman (25:26.840)
who you said was really, they picked,
Dan Gable (25:29.080)
the Soviets picked to beat you.
Lex Fridman (25:31.360)
Right, and I know why they picked him
Dan Gable (25:33.200)
because he had a great attitude.
Lex Fridman (25:34.760)
So he wasn't just the typical artist.
Dan Gable (25:38.560)
He was a good artist.
Lex Fridman (25:39.760)
He hooked elbows like Azhelyov.
Lex Fridman (25:42.400)
And he's from that area of the world
Lex Fridman (25:45.000)
where they have some of those types of moves.
Lex Fridman (25:47.280)
But he, and he was a goer,
Lex Fridman (25:50.040)
but by cutting him down a weight,
Dan Gable (25:52.320)
he lost some of that go.
Lex Fridman (25:54.800)
And I don't know if, you gotta,
Dan Gable (25:57.080)
that's a process you gotta go about scientifically.
Lex Fridman (26:00.600)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (26:01.440)
And so, if you don't do it as an American,
Lex Fridman (26:04.800)
it can really hurt your performance.
Dan Gable (26:06.360)
If you don't do it as a Russian,
Lex Fridman (26:08.040)
it can hurt your performance.
Lex Fridman (26:09.120)
And they already didn't really do that a lot
Lex Fridman (26:12.720)
where you usually wrestle the weight
Dan Gable (26:14.960)
where it was more like your weight.
Lex Fridman (26:17.080)
And so by cutting him down,
Dan Gable (26:19.640)
maybe slowed his belief down a little bit.
Lex Fridman (26:23.040)
So you saw it in him.
Dan Gable (26:23.880)
The spirit was a little bit gone when you were facing him.
Lex Fridman (26:26.240)
Yeah, but then he came back and he won rest of the matches
Lex Fridman (26:29.600)
and he was in the round robin
Lex Fridman (26:31.360)
and he was able to go to the finals,
Lex Fridman (26:34.520)
but he had lost another match actually
Lex Fridman (26:36.840)
against in the round robin against the Japanese.
Lex Fridman (26:39.160)
So I think I had already gained enough of artistic,
Lex Fridman (26:45.320)
being able to finish a match.
Dan Gable (26:46.720)
Once I lost my match in college for the last two years,
Lex Fridman (26:49.960)
I took on some of that artistic work.
Lex Fridman (26:52.600)
And I think that he was already hoping to win,
Lex Fridman (26:57.680)
but he was hoping to win by a long ways
Dan Gable (27:00.040)
because he had to pin me or beat me by eight points
Lex Fridman (27:04.520)
to be able to win the gold.
Lex Fridman (27:06.220)
And that wasn't gonna happen.
Lex Fridman (27:09.000)
I mean, the chances of pin is pretty good.
Lex Fridman (27:11.000)
Is it hard to pin Dan Gable versus take down?
Lex Fridman (27:14.140)
Like, have you taken risks where you could pay for them?
Dan Gable (27:17.840)
I can't remember too many that I took
Lex Fridman (27:21.140)
that would actually put me in a danger position.
Dan Gable (27:23.960)
I've taken risk, but the risks were so scientifically,
Lex Fridman (27:27.360)
technically correct that I wouldn't land
Dan Gable (27:30.700)
in that danger zone.
Lex Fridman (27:33.080)
It's like, if I'm gonna lock up and throw you,
Dan Gable (27:35.040)
I'm not gonna throw you to my own back
Lex Fridman (27:37.040)
and roll you through.
Dan Gable (27:38.040)
I'm gonna turn in the air.
Lex Fridman (27:40.280)
So you were scientific about it.
Dan Gable (27:41.360)
Yeah, exactly.
Lex Fridman (27:44.760)
I learned the hard way.
Dan Gable (27:46.200)
Early on, there was moves from collegiate wrestling
Lex Fridman (27:49.640)
that you did that exposed your shoulders,
Dan Gable (27:51.960)
which it cost me in some early freestyle matches
Lex Fridman (27:55.460)
against great wrestlers.
Lex Fridman (27:57.580)
But I would go back to my collegiate escaping type moves
Lex Fridman (28:03.420)
to where I hit a Granby roll
Dan Gable (28:04.840)
where you expose your shoulders
Lex Fridman (28:06.280)
and you lose two points every time.
Lex Fridman (28:08.040)
But you learn that that's not the system.
Lex Fridman (28:10.400)
But if you hadn't wrestled much,
Dan Gable (28:12.800)
you would get exposed under maybe a desperate situation.
Lex Fridman (28:17.900)
You would hit it.
Lex Fridman (28:18.880)
So you won the gold.
Lex Fridman (28:20.640)
How did it feel?
Dan Gable (28:22.380)
I think it would have,
Lex Fridman (28:23.800)
I think the question would be how would it feel
Lex Fridman (28:26.200)
if you lost the gold for me?
Lex Fridman (28:28.680)
Because I already went through that once.
Dan Gable (28:32.420)
Not at that highest level,
Lex Fridman (28:33.520)
but the National Collegiate Championship level
Dan Gable (28:35.840)
my senior year.
Lex Fridman (28:36.680)
The Larry Owings loss.
Dan Gable (28:37.680)
Larry Owings, yeah.
Lex Fridman (28:39.000)
And that didn't sit well.
Dan Gable (28:40.480)
Were you afraid of that happening again
Lex Fridman (28:44.200)
at the Olympic level?
Lex Fridman (28:45.400)
Was that even a thought?
Lex Fridman (28:46.240)
No, I really wasn't.
Lex Fridman (28:47.420)
But it was why I changed my philosophy of training
Lex Fridman (28:52.200)
and added to the scientific artist type.
Lex Fridman (28:57.840)
And if I had won that match,
Lex Fridman (29:00.060)
even though I wouldn't have felt good about it,
Dan Gable (29:01.600)
even though I squeaked it out,
Lex Fridman (29:04.600)
I wasn't feeling good about that match.
Dan Gable (29:06.880)
It would have affected me a little bit,
Lex Fridman (29:09.640)
but if I'd have won it,
Dan Gable (29:10.480)
I would have got over it.
Lex Fridman (29:12.360)
I mean, I'm not over it now.
Dan Gable (29:14.600)
I mean, I don't know why I was doing this kind of stuff
Lex Fridman (29:17.720)
right before my match.
Dan Gable (29:19.840)
By that, I mean this kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman (29:21.000)
Interviews, yeah, journalists.
Dan Gable (29:23.200)
Yeah, and I really wasn't a good talker then.
Lex Fridman (29:25.080)
I mean, me and you were talking pretty good right now,
Dan Gable (29:26.880)
except for I got a little cold,
Lex Fridman (29:28.040)
but I don't think I could say two words hardly then.
Lex Fridman (29:32.740)
And they took takes.
Lex Fridman (29:35.580)
Wide World of Sports said,
Dan Gable (29:36.520)
hey, we want you to be the introduction
Lex Fridman (29:39.520)
for our next week's show.
Lex Fridman (29:41.400)
So I just say, hey, I'm Dan Gable.
Lex Fridman (29:42.940)
Come watch me as I finish my career undefeated 182 and 0.
Dan Gable (29:46.340)
That's what they want me to say.
Lex Fridman (29:47.240)
Everybody assumed you'd be undefeated.
Lex Fridman (29:48.960)
And I said it.
Lex Fridman (29:50.700)
I had to take it 22 times.
Lex Fridman (29:52.680)
And the last two or three times they wrote it out
Lex Fridman (29:56.080)
and I read it and it still wasn't like I just said it.
Dan Gable (29:59.280)
I was reading it like, hi, I'm Dan Gable.
Lex Fridman (30:02.880)
Come on.
Dan Gable (30:05.120)
You know, that type of stuff.
Lex Fridman (30:06.400)
So, and he finally just closed the book and said,
Dan Gable (30:08.640)
yeah, that's good enough.
Lex Fridman (30:10.120)
But I turned and it was my time to wrestle.
Lex Fridman (30:13.440)
And so, you know, you just, you learn that,
Lex Fridman (30:17.120)
and for me it was great coaching experience
Dan Gable (30:20.400)
because that's what I turned into be.
Lex Fridman (30:22.040)
You know, I coached for longer than I wrestled.
Lex Fridman (30:25.400)
And I put out a lot of champions,
Lex Fridman (30:28.200)
but you learn through mistakes that even in your own career
Dan Gable (30:32.060)
that you had made, you know, it's an ever learning process.
Lex Fridman (30:36.080)
It's an ever learning process.
Lex Fridman (30:38.560)
Have you ever been afraid on the mat?
Lex Fridman (30:40.880)
Does fear have any role do you think for a wrestler
Lex Fridman (30:45.700)
or it must be out there?
Lex Fridman (30:46.540)
Well, I'm sure fear is out there.
Lex Fridman (30:48.880)
And I'm sure that was to my advantage almost every time.
Lex Fridman (30:52.360)
I'm sure in my Olympic finals, I was really off.
Dan Gable (30:54.920)
He had these doubts.
Lex Fridman (30:56.200)
He probably had these doubts.
Lex Fridman (30:58.760)
And that gives me the edge.
Lex Fridman (31:02.840)
And I don't know if I really ever had fear,
Lex Fridman (31:09.280)
but obviously there was points in times
Lex Fridman (31:12.160)
where I didn't perform as well, not many, but a few.
Lex Fridman (31:16.680)
And if I look back of it, look back at it,
Lex Fridman (31:20.120)
I don't think it was that American, you know,
Dan Gable (31:24.440)
raw, raw, raw stuff.
Lex Fridman (31:26.160)
I think it was probably the fear
Dan Gable (31:28.880)
of not being an artist as much.
Lex Fridman (31:33.040)
You know, maybe this guy might be better
Dan Gable (31:34.760)
than me scientifically.
Lex Fridman (31:37.920)
And you know, you're a scientist.
Dan Gable (31:40.360)
I think that got to me more than anything else.
Lex Fridman (31:43.600)
I said early on that I want to eliminate
Dan Gable (31:46.760)
ever having to worry about getting tired in a match.
Lex Fridman (31:49.800)
So I kind of eliminated that.
Lex Fridman (31:51.600)
So I got rid of that point.
Lex Fridman (31:53.400)
And I do think that in wrestling,
Dan Gable (31:55.980)
that is one of the fears that a lot of wrestlers have,
Lex Fridman (32:00.320)
actually how they feel during the match
Lex Fridman (32:02.560)
and are they gonna get tired
Lex Fridman (32:05.960)
and is it gonna affect my performance?
Lex Fridman (32:08.380)
And as a coach, that really was one of the things
Lex Fridman (32:11.320)
I tried to eliminate on all my athletes.
Lex Fridman (32:13.520)
So there wasn't that fear factor,
Lex Fridman (32:15.360)
but that fear factor would be put upon my opponent,
Dan Gable (32:19.840)
which would give me an edge.
Lex Fridman (32:23.240)
But that's not what I needed as much.
Dan Gable (32:25.720)
I needed to just focus,
Lex Fridman (32:26.760)
make sure that I was doing the right things.
Lex Fridman (32:28.720)
And I needed my team to be focused.
Lex Fridman (32:30.080)
So I made sure that for my mistakes as an athlete
Dan Gable (32:33.320)
or even as a coach sometimes, that I didn't repeat them.
Lex Fridman (32:37.440)
Didn't repeat them.
Lex Fridman (32:38.280)
And if you make a mistake once and then you can repeat it,
Lex Fridman (32:41.120)
then it's like you didn't learn anything.
Dan Gable (32:45.640)
Your goal throughout your wrestling career,
Lex Fridman (32:47.800)
as you've beautifully put,
Lex Fridman (32:49.440)
was to work so hard that you pass out on the mat, right?
Lex Fridman (32:52.400)
That you would be carried off the mat.
Lex Fridman (32:54.160)
So you never did successfully in,
Lex Fridman (32:56.500)
that's one of the ways you failed in your career
Dan Gable (32:58.440)
is you've never worked so hard that you've passed out.
Lex Fridman (33:01.420)
Have you ever come close?
Lex Fridman (33:02.640)
Do you remember a time that you've come close
Lex Fridman (33:04.640)
that you've been pushed to the limits of exhaustion?
Dan Gable (33:07.040)
You know, the question is really a good question
Lex Fridman (33:08.980)
about that pushing to you collapse.
Dan Gable (33:12.480)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (33:13.320)
Because I don't, as a coach today, I don't think I get,
Dan Gable (33:15.960)
if I said that to my athletes,
Lex Fridman (33:18.780)
I don't know, I could get in trouble.
Dan Gable (33:22.280)
Because, you know, it's like.
Lex Fridman (33:23.120)
But it's understood, isn't it, by the athletes?
Dan Gable (33:26.720)
Yeah, they understand it.
Lex Fridman (33:29.000)
But the outside might not understand it.
Lex Fridman (33:31.480)
Because it's almost like, what do you mean there?
Lex Fridman (33:34.000)
You push them to the point where they go collapse.
Dan Gable (33:36.840)
It means they may die or something might happen to them.
Lex Fridman (33:40.080)
And, you know, that's dangerous.
Dan Gable (33:41.920)
That's dangerous.
Lex Fridman (33:42.740)
We can't have our kid in that type of atmosphere.
Lex Fridman (33:45.160)
But it's something that's highly unlikely
Lex Fridman (33:48.480)
that's gonna happen.
Lex Fridman (33:49.320)
But I'm gonna tell you, there's many times in a practice
Lex Fridman (33:52.160)
where I had pushed myself to all of a sudden
Dan Gable (33:55.480)
the whistle blew or it was time to stop.
Lex Fridman (33:58.280)
And when I got up off the mat or wherever I was at
Lex Fridman (34:01.880)
and I needed water, I needed fresh air,
Lex Fridman (34:07.840)
because you're usually in a fairly small room
Dan Gable (34:09.440)
with a lot of guys that the heat rises
Lex Fridman (34:12.440)
and it's hard to breathe.
Lex Fridman (34:14.980)
And that I can remember, and I stayed a lot of times
Lex Fridman (34:17.900)
not by the door, the far end of the room.
Dan Gable (34:20.400)
I can remember walking from the far end of the room
Lex Fridman (34:22.680)
to that door.
Lex Fridman (34:23.600)
And I can remember, am I gonna make it the next step?
Lex Fridman (34:27.120)
Am I gonna make it the next step?
Dan Gable (34:28.920)
I need air, I need water, I need oxygen,
Lex Fridman (34:31.620)
I need to get out of here.
Dan Gable (34:33.080)
It didn't happen often,
Lex Fridman (34:34.480)
but I can recount four or five times in my career
Dan Gable (34:37.600)
that I pushed myself to that level
Lex Fridman (34:39.360)
where I thought I was gonna maybe go out,
Lex Fridman (34:42.240)
but every step I was dizzy.
Lex Fridman (34:44.760)
But once I got to that door,
Dan Gable (34:47.080)
I was able to open it and go out and grab the water
Lex Fridman (34:50.160)
and get cold water in my face.
Lex Fridman (34:51.960)
And so, no, I never really was able to do that.
Lex Fridman (34:55.200)
And I think the story is in a book
Dan Gable (34:57.300)
where my daughter pushed a collapse, Molly.
Lex Fridman (35:00.760)
It made you proud.
Dan Gable (35:01.600)
Oh my gosh, and she didn't win.
Lex Fridman (35:04.400)
But she pushed a collapse.
Lex Fridman (35:06.520)
Now, did she suffer because of that?
Lex Fridman (35:10.760)
Well, she didn't get to go to the next event
Dan Gable (35:13.360)
because she had to qualify.
Lex Fridman (35:15.200)
But I think it probably helped her too,
Dan Gable (35:18.840)
realizing because she was winning the race
Lex Fridman (35:20.760)
and she was beating people she normally never pushed,
Lex Fridman (35:23.200)
but she was at a new level that she had never been before
Lex Fridman (35:25.760)
and she only needed about five feet to finish.
Lex Fridman (35:28.720)
And it was just one of those things that
Lex Fridman (35:30.920)
I bet there was a lot of learning that she did there.
Lex Fridman (35:33.320)
And it probably made her realize that she could be better,
Lex Fridman (35:37.440)
but she had to hold up though.
Lex Fridman (35:40.360)
So you mentioned in Wrestling Life
Lex Fridman (35:42.600)
that the Brands Brothers looked up to Roy Salger,
Dan Gable (35:47.360)
who was known for pushing the limits of physical wrestling,
Lex Fridman (35:50.600)
but not getting too rough.
Lex Fridman (35:52.700)
So how do you find the line
Lex Fridman (35:54.200)
between extreme physical wrestling,
Lex Fridman (35:56.620)
but at the same time not rough wrestling or angry wrestling?
Lex Fridman (36:00.920)
So that line between aggression, tough wrestling and anger.
Dan Gable (36:05.320)
Well, I think anger would cause less successful wrestling.
Lex Fridman (36:11.760)
I think anger would cause you to make mistakes
Lex Fridman (36:14.960)
and actually get out of position
Lex Fridman (36:18.160)
because I think anger is kind of a loss of control.
Lex Fridman (36:21.620)
And there can be a furious type of attack,
Lex Fridman (36:31.320)
but I think if it crosses the line to anger,
Dan Gable (36:36.320)
then you're gonna be vulnerable.
Lex Fridman (36:38.820)
And so Royce and the Brands wrestled to the edge,
Dan Gable (36:47.320)
through the edge, but when the whistle blew,
Lex Fridman (36:50.620)
they stopped.
Lex Fridman (36:52.520)
And there's people that when the whistle blows,
Lex Fridman (36:54.620)
they keep going.
Dan Gable (36:56.660)
It's like in a football game,
Lex Fridman (36:59.360)
a fight breaks out and it's after the whistles blow.
Dan Gable (37:02.800)
Well, when the whistle blew, they backed off.
Lex Fridman (37:07.480)
So that whistle was something that in a match,
Dan Gable (37:14.200)
that kind of gave them the boundaries.
Lex Fridman (37:18.080)
But perhaps it could be a little bit of fuel.
Lex Fridman (37:20.360)
So in Wrestling Tough, the book that you just got
Lex Fridman (37:23.000)
from Mike Chapman, the new edition,
Dan Gable (37:25.240)
talks about Bill Cole, undefeated Northern Iowa wrestler.
Lex Fridman (37:28.720)
And how he talked about how my strength, speed
Lex Fridman (37:33.600)
and ability to think were increased tremendously
Lex Fridman (37:36.140)
by just sitting apart from the action prior to the match
Lex Fridman (37:39.400)
and getting into a state of controlled anger.
Lex Fridman (37:42.880)
So can anger, controlled, so anger could be fuel
Dan Gable (37:48.280)
as long as it's controlled.
Lex Fridman (37:49.720)
Right, exactly.
Dan Gable (37:50.960)
You had that line.
Lex Fridman (37:52.680)
One side of the line, you can have an anger
Dan Gable (37:55.920)
for performance and the other side of the line,
Lex Fridman (38:00.160)
if you go beyond that, it's not gonna be for performance.
Dan Gable (38:02.720)
It's gonna be for not performance
Lex Fridman (38:04.960)
because you're gonna lose points.
Dan Gable (38:06.520)
It's a fine line.
Lex Fridman (38:07.500)
There's definitely a fine line.
Dan Gable (38:09.560)
You're talking about Roy Selger.
Lex Fridman (38:11.400)
You're talking about Tom Brands.
Dan Gable (38:13.000)
You're talking about Terry Brands.
Lex Fridman (38:14.800)
I mean, you got world championship titles there.
Dan Gable (38:16.620)
You got Olympic championship title there.
Lex Fridman (38:18.340)
You got a world silver medalist in Roy Selger.
Lex Fridman (38:23.640)
And when I talked to him about the world silver medalist,
Lex Fridman (38:30.080)
he's haunted by that.
Dan Gable (38:32.040)
Cause he was actually 20 seconds away from winning
Lex Fridman (38:35.200)
when he got beat in the end there,
Lex Fridman (38:36.880)
but that's part of the game.
Lex Fridman (38:38.520)
And I don't know whether he's okay with it or not.
Dan Gable (38:43.520)
Cause he says every, after talking about things,
Lex Fridman (38:45.840)
he goes, I'm okay with it now.
Lex Fridman (38:49.400)
But then he keeps talking about it.
Lex Fridman (38:51.400)
So I don't really think he's okay with it.
Lex Fridman (38:54.980)
And it's hard for him to actually make amends to himself
Lex Fridman (39:01.060)
when you really don't do it.
Dan Gable (39:02.560)
I mean, it's no matter what the situation,
Lex Fridman (39:04.800)
even with the Owings loss.
Dan Gable (39:07.360)
Yeah, it still eats it.
Lex Fridman (39:09.040)
I mean, yeah, I'm a world champion.
Dan Gable (39:10.860)
He's not, and he wanted to be.
Lex Fridman (39:13.240)
I'm Olympic champion.
Dan Gable (39:14.560)
He's not, he wanted to be.
Lex Fridman (39:16.080)
One of the greatest coaches of all time.
Dan Gable (39:18.160)
Yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman (39:19.320)
And so, it's like, why do I keep going back to it?
Dan Gable (39:25.720)
Because you don't get over those things.
Lex Fridman (39:30.260)
So Roy really keeps going back to it,
Dan Gable (39:32.360)
even though he says he's fine.
Lex Fridman (39:35.480)
But then he realizes he's really not fine
Dan Gable (39:38.080)
because that's just the nature of the game.
Lex Fridman (39:39.580)
And that's why he was able to win national titles
Lex Fridman (39:42.200)
and make world teams and stuff like that.
Lex Fridman (39:48.100)
What's interesting about him,
Dan Gable (39:49.200)
he's analyzed all the people that he's wrestled,
Lex Fridman (39:52.040)
and a lot of them have won world and Olympic championships.
Lex Fridman (39:55.680)
And he's beaten every one of them at one time or another.
Lex Fridman (39:58.560)
And he didn't get to that world championship gold
Dan Gable (40:01.560)
or Olympic gold.
Lex Fridman (40:03.340)
And he says it because they did it.
Lex Fridman (40:08.040)
So he's showing people that I beaten those guys.
Lex Fridman (40:14.320)
But apparently he didn't beat them at the right time.
Lex Fridman (40:18.080)
And so it's still haunting.
Lex Fridman (40:20.640)
You don't get away from that stuff.
Dan Gable (40:22.560)
I mean, it's just like anything in life that's really high.
Lex Fridman (40:27.340)
I mean, it doesn't have to be athletics.
Dan Gable (40:30.240)
I mean, you think I'm ever gonna get over
Lex Fridman (40:33.520)
the murder of my sister?
Lex Fridman (40:35.760)
And you might not even know that.
Lex Fridman (40:37.120)
Let me pause for a second, please.
Dan Gable (40:39.040)
You've talked about it, you've written about it.
Lex Fridman (40:41.460)
So I hope it's okay for me to say that your sister,
Dan Gable (40:44.100)
your older sister, on May 31st, 1964,
Lex Fridman (40:48.980)
was raped and murdered by a local boy.
Lex Fridman (40:52.960)
So the echoes of pain and anger from that tragic day,
Lex Fridman (40:57.500)
do they ripple through your life still?
Dan Gable (41:00.640)
Through your wrestling, through your coaching,
Lex Fridman (41:02.480)
through the way you, when you wake up in the morning?
Lex Fridman (41:06.360)
What is that like?
Lex Fridman (41:09.960)
It can be very emotional to me under certain circumstances.
Lex Fridman (41:15.440)
And it can be the mood I'm in.
Lex Fridman (41:21.880)
It can be maybe if I've had a Mountain Dew
Dan Gable (41:24.640)
or maybe if I've had a Gable beer.
Lex Fridman (41:27.360)
Yeah, or maybe if you turn the country music
Dan Gable (41:33.640)
up a little bit loud, emotions come out
Lex Fridman (41:39.400)
and everybody has them in their life.
Lex Fridman (41:43.320)
It's just so happens, what brings it out?
Lex Fridman (41:46.720)
And hopefully it's nothing that you do
Dan Gable (41:49.360)
to the extreme point to where it brings it out.
Lex Fridman (41:52.480)
For me, it's not extreme.
Dan Gable (41:54.120)
I don't have to have any of that really,
Lex Fridman (41:55.680)
I can get emotional.
Lex Fridman (41:57.760)
How did that change you as a man?
Lex Fridman (42:01.960)
What it did was realize
Dan Gable (42:03.840)
that I was already pretty well developed
Lex Fridman (42:09.080)
because I was only a sophomore,
Dan Gable (42:11.120)
15 years old in high school.
Lex Fridman (42:13.840)
And I had parents that weren't making it.
Lex Fridman (42:17.860)
And my parents are a lot older than me.
Lex Fridman (42:20.600)
And now that we're down just to me and my parents,
Lex Fridman (42:24.040)
and I'm gonna be around the house for another two years.
Lex Fridman (42:27.960)
And they had just lost a daughter
Dan Gable (42:30.400)
that was the only other sibling.
Lex Fridman (42:36.660)
They weren't handling it.
Dan Gable (42:37.920)
They were the ones that were suffering much more than me,
Lex Fridman (42:42.960)
even though I always look back upon one area
Dan Gable (42:47.860)
that I wasn't good at was communication at that time,
Lex Fridman (42:50.720)
except inside the resident room,
Dan Gable (42:52.800)
because I had been tipped off.
Lex Fridman (42:55.760)
Tipped off, what do you mean?
Dan Gable (42:57.480)
Well, then everybody said that something to me
Lex Fridman (42:59.600)
about my sister just three weeks before that,
Dan Gable (43:03.000)
that really wasn't normal or practical.
Lex Fridman (43:08.080)
And I said nothing to nobody.
Lex Fridman (43:12.920)
Is there a part of you that blames yourself?
Lex Fridman (43:16.120)
Yeah, absolutely.
Dan Gable (43:19.520)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (43:20.360)
But I'm 15 years old and you make mistakes.
Lex Fridman (43:27.360)
And you don't really act on everything
Lex Fridman (43:30.000)
that happens in your life.
Lex Fridman (43:32.400)
But I can tell you how it affected me.
Lex Fridman (43:34.000)
And I acted a lot on anything
Dan Gable (43:37.220)
that maybe wasn't even of that consequence.
Lex Fridman (43:39.580)
I mean, cause I had four daughters
Lex Fridman (43:41.120)
and I'm telling you when they left every time
Lex Fridman (43:42.820)
to go somewhere in a car or go out with someplace,
Dan Gable (43:45.600)
I always said something to them.
Lex Fridman (43:47.840)
And they would always say, dad, you said that last night.
Dan Gable (43:50.900)
I don't care.
Lex Fridman (43:51.740)
What, like I love you or like be careful?
Dan Gable (43:54.160)
I'd say like, don't be driving and drinking
Lex Fridman (43:56.440)
or don't be in a car with somebody
Dan Gable (43:59.640)
that's of the same nature,
Lex Fridman (44:03.120)
or stay out of trouble.
Dan Gable (44:05.360)
Don't go be somewhere where you have,
Lex Fridman (44:07.720)
I said, you know how to get out of a car
Dan Gable (44:09.200)
if your car goes into the river.
Lex Fridman (44:12.800)
I'm always thinking ahead a little bit,
Dan Gable (44:16.020)
just in case of something did happen.
Lex Fridman (44:19.360)
And it goes back to that walk to school
Dan Gable (44:22.120)
with that young man that when he was talking to me
Lex Fridman (44:25.160)
and I just, I took it and I kept it inside me.
Lex Fridman (44:28.480)
And once I found out she had been murdered,
Lex Fridman (44:33.180)
it took me maybe 25 to 30 minutes.
Lex Fridman (44:37.040)
And I told my dad, I think I know who killed her.
Lex Fridman (44:41.140)
And he looked at me and he just like,
Dan Gable (44:44.640)
he slapped me actually.
Lex Fridman (44:46.080)
He pushed me against the car.
Dan Gable (44:47.280)
He didn't slap me.
Lex Fridman (44:48.120)
He pushed me against the car.
Dan Gable (44:48.960)
My mom slaps me.
Lex Fridman (44:49.800)
She was the one that slapped me around a little bit.
Lex Fridman (44:51.320)
But my dad, he pushed me against the car and go,
Lex Fridman (44:55.120)
what do you mean you might know something about this?
Dan Gable (44:57.360)
I said, dad, I don't for sure,
Lex Fridman (44:59.760)
but, and I would probably all crying,
Dan Gable (45:02.360)
but, and I don't, I doubt if I was crying yet.
Lex Fridman (45:06.400)
I've probably cried a lot of tears since,
Dan Gable (45:08.540)
but, you know, I just said,
Lex Fridman (45:11.280)
hey, I was walking to school with this neighbor
Lex Fridman (45:15.040)
and I never had walked to school with him before.
Lex Fridman (45:17.880)
And he was kind of a troubled kid.
Lex Fridman (45:20.840)
And he said something about Diane and it wasn't good,
Lex Fridman (45:26.080)
but I didn't, he goes, why didn't you say something?
Lex Fridman (45:29.680)
I said, daddy, I just boy talk, you know?
Lex Fridman (45:33.040)
So, you know, and so he hugged me, he hugged me,
Dan Gable (45:35.600)
he hugged me and, you know, it was one of these things
Lex Fridman (45:39.520)
that it's definitely made me a lot of who I am
Dan Gable (45:46.120)
because there's been a lot of choices and I don't,
Lex Fridman (45:48.680)
I took the word choice out of my life
Lex Fridman (45:51.040)
and I just like to say, okay, do the right thing,
Lex Fridman (45:53.360)
do the thing that you should do.
Lex Fridman (45:55.520)
And so I don't really, it's like,
Lex Fridman (45:57.200)
are you gonna do this or this?
Lex Fridman (45:58.480)
Well, what do you mean?
Lex Fridman (45:59.320)
Which one's better?
Lex Fridman (46:00.820)
You know?
Lex Fridman (46:01.660)
Well, then I'm, so I don't have that choice.
Dan Gable (46:03.640)
Just give me the right way to go.
Lex Fridman (46:05.240)
And so not that I've been perfect by any means,
Lex Fridman (46:08.240)
but it's made a big difference in my life
Lex Fridman (46:10.880)
on how I handle my life.
Dan Gable (46:13.820)
It's probably given me the opportunity
Lex Fridman (46:16.400)
to be married for 44 years.
Dan Gable (46:18.120)
It's just given me opportunities to be better in my life.
Lex Fridman (46:22.460)
And I, you know, I wanna thank my sister for that,
Dan Gable (46:26.640)
you know, and I think my family was ready to make a split
Lex Fridman (46:33.520)
because of that incident, they're blaming each other.
Lex Fridman (46:36.200)
And I think that I was able to help, but more than that,
Lex Fridman (46:41.840)
they really liked each other,
Lex Fridman (46:43.060)
but they didn't really know it at the time
Lex Fridman (46:45.560)
until I got out of the house.
Dan Gable (46:47.520)
Two years later, it probably was going on
Lex Fridman (46:50.320)
for a couple of years until I moved on and went to college.
Dan Gable (46:52.960)
Then they found out they really liked each other
Lex Fridman (46:55.320)
when they were alone and it worked out pretty good.
Lex Fridman (46:58.520)
But I think them being able to follow me,
Lex Fridman (47:02.080)
not just through college and the Olympics and worlds,
Lex Fridman (47:06.880)
but my coaching.
Lex Fridman (47:08.200)
So it's the same, the same success and factor,
Dan Gable (47:11.700)
you know, the excitement and all those things
Lex Fridman (47:14.320)
gave them a real purpose.
Lex Fridman (47:16.980)
And it gave my four daughters, it gave my wife,
Lex Fridman (47:21.280)
you know, a real purpose to be able to be close
Dan Gable (47:24.240)
to all these champions and championships.
Lex Fridman (47:27.080)
And now it's like, there's a family of 22
Lex Fridman (47:32.080)
and they're all interested in what we're interested in.
Lex Fridman (47:34.600)
And it's going good, knock on wood.
Lex Fridman (47:36.360)
But you know, it's something that when all of a sudden
Lex Fridman (47:39.240)
you got too much time in your hands
Lex Fridman (47:40.520)
and you're not doing and accomplishing much
Lex Fridman (47:42.680)
that things probably, you know, get off track.
Lex Fridman (47:47.000)
What do you think is the role of family in wrestling?
Lex Fridman (47:49.360)
Can a man do it alone?
Lex Fridman (47:50.960)
And if not, where's family most important?
Lex Fridman (47:55.520)
You know, you can do it alone, but why would you want to?
Dan Gable (48:00.600)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (48:01.440)
I think the chances of doing it alone
Dan Gable (48:03.000)
are much less than the chances of doing it together.
Lex Fridman (48:07.940)
I know they say, don't bring your profession home sometimes.
Dan Gable (48:10.840)
They say that, I never got away from my profession.
Lex Fridman (48:16.000)
And you know, sometimes I, it's like my house right here.
Lex Fridman (48:21.000)
So when I'm moving home and I'm not going to have an office
Lex Fridman (48:25.680)
because I'm not going to coach anymore
Dan Gable (48:27.240)
or I'm not going to be an assistant athletic director
Lex Fridman (48:29.760)
for a while, that you got to do something
Dan Gable (48:34.320)
that gives you a little bit of a break.
Lex Fridman (48:39.640)
Not you necessarily, maybe the person you're living with.
Lex Fridman (48:42.600)
And so I don't know if you looked outside there,
Lex Fridman (48:44.300)
I got a cabin right out in my backyard.
Dan Gable (48:45.840)
You probably can't see it right there, but.
Lex Fridman (48:47.400)
What's in the cabin?
Dan Gable (48:48.760)
That's my house away from my house.
Lex Fridman (48:51.480)
It's only 30 feet from my house and it's my office
Lex Fridman (48:55.480)
and it's my workout room.
Lex Fridman (48:57.440)
I got a sauna there, it's a bed upstairs if I need it.
Dan Gable (49:00.980)
If I ever get too close and she says,
Lex Fridman (49:03.380)
hey, why don't you go sleep in the other house?
Lex Fridman (49:05.480)
But you know, it kicks me out of the bed, but.
Lex Fridman (49:07.440)
Get the heck out.
Dan Gable (49:08.280)
It's never happened.
Lex Fridman (49:09.160)
But I do spend a lot of time out there.
Lex Fridman (49:11.720)
And it's, you know, you got to have a little distance
Lex Fridman (49:15.000)
sometimes and you got to know your role.
Lex Fridman (49:18.960)
And so all of a sudden when you're a guy that's been gone
Lex Fridman (49:21.160)
your whole life from eight o clock in the morning
Dan Gable (49:23.400)
until close to seven, three or eight o clock at night.
Lex Fridman (49:25.440)
So 11, 12 hours a day, then all of a sudden
Dan Gable (49:28.120)
you're not gone as much, even though you still work.
Lex Fridman (49:30.960)
She's trying to slow me down now.
Dan Gable (49:32.160)
I'm doing not so much like here, what we're doing right now,
Lex Fridman (49:35.040)
but it's when I get in the car and drive somewhere
Dan Gable (49:37.360)
or fly somewhere, you know, like just last night
Lex Fridman (49:40.240)
I just went to bed and I hadn't told her
Dan Gable (49:41.800)
that this guy called me and he wants me to speak
Lex Fridman (49:45.240)
for a bit, want to build another, wrestling wants
Dan Gable (49:48.520)
to start another wrestlers and business networking out
Lex Fridman (49:51.640)
in Delaware because we don't have any colleges
Dan Gable (49:55.880)
in wrestling in Delaware.
Lex Fridman (49:57.360)
And so I said, well, you know, I'm glad to do that
Lex Fridman (49:59.680)
because that's my life, you know?
Lex Fridman (50:01.240)
So, but then all of a sudden I didn't say anything
Dan Gable (50:04.560)
to my wife until all of a sudden this morning.
Lex Fridman (50:07.160)
And I told her that I might go on the Friday
Dan Gable (50:09.480)
the 21st of December.
Lex Fridman (50:11.280)
Oh no.
Dan Gable (50:12.400)
Well, I said, that's not Christmas.
Lex Fridman (50:14.720)
She goes, we're celebrating Christmas that weekend early
Dan Gable (50:18.520)
because a lot of the family can't be here
Lex Fridman (50:21.280)
except for that weekend.
Dan Gable (50:22.400)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (50:23.400)
And I said, oh, well, that's not gonna work.
Lex Fridman (50:26.040)
But I kind of didn't say anything to her at first.
Lex Fridman (50:28.560)
And then, well, I'll tell you,
Dan Gable (50:30.400)
she started getting a little emotional.
Lex Fridman (50:32.640)
And if I want to stay married for another year, 45 years,
Dan Gable (50:36.920)
then I better tell those people that I got family
Lex Fridman (50:41.720)
obligations because that depends what's most important.
Dan Gable (50:48.120)
I love wrestling.
Lex Fridman (50:48.960)
I love wrestling and I want to start another,
Dan Gable (50:52.040)
start another wrestlers and business network.
Lex Fridman (50:54.000)
But there's more than one Dan Gable out there.
Dan Gable (50:55.880)
Well, maybe not, but there's a lot of people
Lex Fridman (50:59.800)
that are maybe even closer and they got big names.
Dan Gable (51:05.040)
I mean, we're doing pretty well right now.
Lex Fridman (51:06.760)
I mean, we got first two years ago
Lex Fridman (51:09.560)
and we got second this year.
Lex Fridman (51:12.320)
And then we got the women's freestyles
Dan Gable (51:14.160)
doing good in wrestling.
Lex Fridman (51:15.600)
We got to work a little bit on our Greco yet,
Lex Fridman (51:17.640)
but they are working on it.
Lex Fridman (51:20.280)
But our men's freestyle team right now are excellent.
Lex Fridman (51:25.560)
And the key for them is to get them all on the same page
Lex Fridman (51:32.680)
instead of just have new highlights.
Lex Fridman (51:35.960)
And by that, I'm saying, you look and see who won this year.
Lex Fridman (51:39.080)
Well, the three guys that have never won before
Dan Gable (51:41.240)
won this year.
Lex Fridman (51:42.080)
We had three world champions.
Dan Gable (51:43.240)
Our two past world champions didn't win this year.
Lex Fridman (51:48.040)
I mean, they did okay, they got medals.
Lex Fridman (51:51.760)
Did Borrows win?
Lex Fridman (51:52.800)
No, he did not.
Dan Gable (51:54.120)
He got third.
Lex Fridman (51:55.520)
Oh, that's right, he got bronze, yeah.
Lex Fridman (51:56.880)
And Sajilov got, I mean, Snyder got second.
Lex Fridman (52:00.120)
So those two are our main guys.
Lex Fridman (52:02.800)
So the three new guys that came through
Lex Fridman (52:05.840)
were guys that hadn't won world gold.
Dan Gable (52:08.720)
In fact, two of them have never made a world team before.
Lex Fridman (52:11.360)
And so we have three world champions this year,
Lex Fridman (52:14.200)
but we needed all five of them to come through
Lex Fridman (52:16.200)
to win the championships.
Lex Fridman (52:18.440)
And so the key really is getting them all to do the same
Lex Fridman (52:22.880)
at the same time, year in and year out,
Lex Fridman (52:25.680)
and not just based on, okay, Borrows got beat this year,
Lex Fridman (52:30.440)
so he'll win next year.
Dan Gable (52:32.160)
It's gotta be every year if you're capable of doing that.
Lex Fridman (52:34.640)
And that's what the coaching staff has to do.
Dan Gable (52:36.760)
What's kind of funny that I do have a lot of influence
Lex Fridman (52:39.000)
actually on the coaching staffs right now at the USA level
Dan Gable (52:41.960)
because the women's freestyle guy is Terry Steiner.
Lex Fridman (52:46.740)
And he wrestled for me, he was a national champion.
Dan Gable (52:49.040)
He's got a twin brother that's at Fresno State.
Lex Fridman (52:52.240)
And then Billy Zaddik is the freestyle coach
Lex Fridman (52:56.560)
and he wrestled for the Hawkeyes back in the early days.
Lex Fridman (53:00.380)
And he was the national champion.
Lex Fridman (53:02.040)
So we've got a lot of former Gable influence on there,
Lex Fridman (53:06.800)
but it's.
Dan Gable (53:07.640)
You got deep roots in there.
Lex Fridman (53:08.880)
In 2013, the International Olympic Committee, IOC,
Dan Gable (53:12.160)
voted wrestling out of the Olympics.
Lex Fridman (53:14.500)
So a lot of folks know about this,
Dan Gable (53:17.320)
the absurdity of it and so on.
Lex Fridman (53:20.040)
But in a big picture, you can step back now,
Dan Gable (53:22.480)
it's five years later.
Lex Fridman (53:23.520)
What did you learn from that experience?
Lex Fridman (53:26.820)
Well, first of all, did it surprise me?
Lex Fridman (53:31.160)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (53:32.880)
But did it really surprise me?
Lex Fridman (53:35.500)
No.
Dan Gable (53:38.680)
You gotta run.
Lex Fridman (53:39.800)
You gotta have people running the organization
Dan Gable (53:45.200)
that are top notch.
Lex Fridman (53:48.080)
If you take anything for granted
Lex Fridman (53:51.320)
and you're not the person of authority,
Lex Fridman (53:53.840)
somebody can kick you out.
Lex Fridman (53:57.640)
And even though we had a lot of authority
Lex Fridman (54:00.240)
because we're wrestling,
Dan Gable (54:01.680)
we're one of the first sports in the Olympics ever,
Lex Fridman (54:05.400)
and that we think that we're in 180 some countries
Lex Fridman (54:12.140)
and some of the number one countries in the world
Lex Fridman (54:18.180)
that are politically strong have the sport,
Dan Gable (54:22.560)
we thought we were okay.
Lex Fridman (54:23.440)
But then you gotta look and see who's running the IOC.
Dan Gable (54:26.200)
The IOC, the International Olympic Committee.
Lex Fridman (54:32.680)
And then you gotta see that in wrestling,
Dan Gable (54:35.860)
we don't have anybody in there.
Lex Fridman (54:37.620)
I mean, that shocked me.
Dan Gable (54:39.380)
We've never had anybody on the IOC from wrestling.
Lex Fridman (54:43.840)
You know why?
Dan Gable (54:45.020)
Because we didn't have to, but yes, that's wrong.
Lex Fridman (54:50.400)
You have to.
Lex Fridman (54:51.900)
And if you don't have somebody looking out for you
Lex Fridman (54:55.620)
right within the structure,
Dan Gable (54:58.540)
then it's pretty easy for people to turn their head.
Lex Fridman (55:01.220)
But all it took was the statement,
Dan Gable (55:07.000)
you guys are kicked out of the Olympics.
Lex Fridman (55:08.740)
You guys are done.
Dan Gable (55:09.740)
Everybody came together.
Lex Fridman (55:11.460)
Well, yeah, I mean, it's the first time in history
Dan Gable (55:14.660)
that probably all this competitive people
Lex Fridman (55:18.060)
that were working for their own agenda
Dan Gable (55:20.860)
turned that agenda to the sport.
Lex Fridman (55:27.000)
So that made a big difference and we got a lot done.
Dan Gable (55:30.000)
In fact, in America, there was several people
Lex Fridman (55:35.400)
that were really out there that we didn't know about
Dan Gable (55:40.560)
until this point in time.
Lex Fridman (55:42.560)
And when they came aboard, now they're still aboard.
Dan Gable (55:47.800)
That doesn't mean we're doing everything perfect
Lex Fridman (55:50.280)
because just because we got voted back in
Dan Gable (55:52.200)
before we even got kicked out really,
Lex Fridman (55:54.660)
that doesn't mean we're by any means safe.
Dan Gable (55:58.360)
We have to do some of the things that I'm talking about
Lex Fridman (56:00.920)
or some of the things that we didn't do before.
Dan Gable (56:03.760)
We can't fall right back into the same mess.
Lex Fridman (56:06.440)
And so our leadership got changed and it's better,
Lex Fridman (56:11.420)
but it's gotta stay better.
Lex Fridman (56:13.320)
But there are things that we could still be doing
Dan Gable (56:18.000)
to make sure that we don't have situations like this happen.
Lex Fridman (56:22.760)
I'll tell you, when I first learned about it,
Dan Gable (56:24.560)
I was like, I broke down and wept again.
Lex Fridman (56:29.080)
It's like every once in a while,
Dan Gable (56:30.080)
I'll break down and cry about my sister
Lex Fridman (56:35.560)
or I'll break down, I don't know if I cry
Dan Gable (56:38.520)
about losing the owings, but I probably get more determined.
Lex Fridman (56:42.080)
But that's kind of, you have to go back
Lex Fridman (56:45.400)
and think about those moments when you heard,
Lex Fridman (56:47.800)
when I heard that moment and it just overcame me.
Dan Gable (56:53.980)
It was like four o clock, 4.30 in the morning
Lex Fridman (56:56.840)
when I heard about it.
Lex Fridman (56:57.680)
And my wife had been up looking at the internet
Lex Fridman (57:00.400)
and she woke me up and I thought she was joking,
Lex Fridman (57:03.000)
but I jumped out of bed really quick when she said that.
Lex Fridman (57:05.600)
I knew she was serious.
Lex Fridman (57:07.080)
And I started making phone calls right then
Lex Fridman (57:10.680)
to find out if it was true.
Lex Fridman (57:11.960)
And when I found out it was true,
Lex Fridman (57:13.320)
it was just like devastating.
Lex Fridman (57:14.720)
And it was one of these things that it's a nightmare,
Lex Fridman (57:20.160)
and, but you don't let it happen again.
Dan Gable (57:24.400)
It's that simple.
Lex Fridman (57:26.040)
You keep getting stronger.
Dan Gable (57:27.680)
Yeah, and if people haven't read,
Lex Fridman (57:30.880)
they should read The Loss of Dan Gable
Dan Gable (57:32.480)
by Ray Thompson, the ESPN article.
Lex Fridman (57:34.600)
That kind of, in this very beautiful poetic way,
Dan Gable (57:38.240)
ties together all the losses of Dan Gable,
Lex Fridman (57:42.840)
the losing your sister, losing to Larry Owens,
Dan Gable (57:46.560)
losing wrestling from the Olympics,
Lex Fridman (57:48.680)
all of these tragedies of various forms.
Lex Fridman (57:53.920)
So that's, well, the IOC, there's politics,
Lex Fridman (57:57.960)
and you're sort of being very pragmatic.
Lex Fridman (58:00.080)
But stepping back, wrestling is one of the oldest forms
Lex Fridman (58:03.480)
of combat, period.
Dan Gable (58:04.920)
Dating back, there's cave drawings 15,000 years ago.
Lex Fridman (58:08.560)
And if you look at the ancient Olympics,
Dan Gable (58:11.560)
the Greek Olympics, 2,700 years ago,
Lex Fridman (58:14.840)
did you ever, when you wrestled or coached,
Lex Fridman (58:17.280)
do you now see wrestling in this way,
Lex Fridman (58:20.720)
freestyle and folk style wrestling,
Dan Gable (58:22.520)
the purity of sort of two human beings locked in combat,
Lex Fridman (58:26.560)
the roots of that as just human beings,
Lex Fridman (58:30.400)
this fair struggle between two men or two women?
Lex Fridman (58:34.400)
I don't think I ever looked at it
Dan Gable (58:37.480)
as anything but just a combat.
Lex Fridman (58:43.320)
And I think there's times that have made me
Dan Gable (58:50.080)
figure out how to make that combat better.
Lex Fridman (58:53.340)
There's little markers or little points in time in your life
Dan Gable (58:58.340)
that make you wonder, or I should say determined,
Lex Fridman (59:06.080)
to be able to get more out of yourself
Lex Fridman (59:10.040)
and to be able to take it to a new level.
Lex Fridman (59:13.080)
And I don't think people can actually feel that way
Dan Gable (59:16.400)
unless you've actually had a lot of accomplishments
Lex Fridman (59:19.480)
in anything.
Dan Gable (59:20.920)
I think there's anything out there.
Lex Fridman (59:22.400)
I mean, no matter what sport
Dan Gable (59:24.080)
or breaking the four minute mile,
Lex Fridman (59:26.320)
I mean, when you broke that, when they broke that,
Dan Gable (59:29.480)
Roger Bannister broke that four minute mile,
Lex Fridman (59:31.600)
I can't imagine him breaking it
Dan Gable (59:33.260)
from his best time being 4.30.
Lex Fridman (59:37.440)
It's one of these things that along the line
Dan Gable (59:41.080)
that he did had some close calls
Lex Fridman (59:45.480)
or he had some coaching that was giving him
Dan Gable (59:49.000)
the opportunity to become a little better.
Lex Fridman (59:50.980)
But I think because he was doing well
Lex Fridman (59:54.440)
and being very successful, that the opportunity came.
Lex Fridman (59:58.480)
And so it's for me, it's like the same thing.
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