As we wind down the short training phase leading towards the Oceania Games, there are a few noteworthy lessons to be taken away from it. The first is that there is no better way to get in shape than to do lots and lots of sparring. That is, don't save the sparring training till later in the training phase. Introduce sparring early on but keep it flowing and light. The heavy match practice can come later once the athlete is in decent competitive shape.

The second is that the peaking phase is extremely important. I was amazed at how the athletes could perfectly execute techniques in practice, but fail to seize the opportunity to use them while sparring. The peaking phase involves visualisation, timing and reflex training. It is quite easy to see how a week's worth of "peaking" training trims away so much wasted movement and hesitatation. I've incorporated a lot of mental drills for this Oceania training plan and it is having a tremendous effect. Having great technical execution was simply not good enough. I could see that transitioning from one move to another was the area where a lot of time was wasted *thinking* about what move to go to next. Mental training, flow drills and developing a good strategy had a great effect towards solving this. However, "peaking" is also the phase that requires the greatest coaching resource. While it is relatively easy to drill a large class on basic techniques and making them spar, every wrestler has individual problems which must be solved by developing mental drills etc which are suitable for that individual.