Day In The Life of Olympic Wrestling Champion David Taylor

David Taylor, Wyoming native, the Magic man Taylor, he's just been having a ball out here. Talk about a guy who's wrestling with a lot of ease and fun to watch.

David Taylor, one of the great ones.

You're going leave the sink and shift behind. Come on, Horizon wind. We're going up around the.

All right, so this is wrestling room. So this is like where the magic happens. This is the best wrestling program in the country for the last decade. I got here in 2009. That was the first year Coach Sanderson coaching staff got here. You know, it's been here for the last 15 years. You just get in here and you just want to get better, you know, And I. I remember when I got here, graduating high school, I was the number one recruit in the country. And I kind of thought, like, may this next step was going to be easy. And it was. It was nothing but easy. I got in here, I got my butt whooped for a while. I knew coming to Penn State, this is a place that I could become a better wrestler, you know, and without a doubt, even though it took a little longer in the beginning than I thought, you know, it definitely has helped me to, you know, achieve all the goals that I set out to do as a little kid, you know, because of this room and the coaches that are here. Loaded up my first form creatine this morning got 10mgs in this beast Getting ready for this workout I gotta get my mind right It's a tough.

To pick up the tips of my mean al.

Inside your jaws.

If we on the night feel spread it out.

I pack up without a curl.

Well cross by the road.

When light falls time to fall.

I wrestle really high pace, really high pace when I wrestle. So I think that's the hardest part about training. As I've gotten later in my career when I was early, you know, I started doing workouts almost 10 years ago. I was trying to build my identity, like what I wanted to be. How did I wanted to wrestle? So every day was new after I won the Olympics, you know, the years since the Olympics, the last three years, you know, there's nothing new anymore. There's no new workouts, no new reps. But you gotta find different ways to motivate yourself in ways, you know, last couple years was just to get to here, get to the Olympic here. Because, you know, that's when it's like, okay, everything means something again, like, really means something. To train the way I need to train, to wrestle the way I want to wrestle. It's. It's hard to do because I know what that takes. And today was one of the best workouts I've had in literally years. My goal is to wrestle a pace that nobody can match, you know, and obviously that takes wrestling skill and ability, but also got to take your mind and your body to somewhere. It's just like not comfortable. And I truly think it takes like a different level of vulnerability, you know, because when you truly leave no stone unturned, if you fall short, you have nothing to look back on. You can't be like, oh, well, I didn't try this. And you know, when you put everything into it, you know, you're a little vulnerable. That's it. Your result is out there and you leave nothing. You empty the tank. And that's just the way that I want to be when I compete. Everybody wants to hold back a little bit, to have a reason why it didn't work. Really excited about today's workout. I was nervous before it. This was a workout that we had planned on really challenging and I was able to meet the standard that I was looking for. And setting the bar high for the next six weeks leading the Olympic trials. The exciting thing is I'm just gonna keep getting better. So today was a great workout. So my wife and I have a cold pressed juice company downtown called K2 Roots. We started 2017. We're in the process of opening two more businesses on the other end of town and another K2 Roots location. We're going like full restaurant. So we're gonna add more menu items will be breakfast, lunch and dinner. We'll keep the location we have right now as a grab and go spot and then the new location. So upstairs will be new K2 roots. Then downstairs will be Vitality Wellness Club. So it'll have saunas, cold plunges, hyperbaric chamber, oxygen water therapy cycle, studio, red light compression. So like a one stop health and wellness shop. So upstairs, Katie Roots. Downstairs, Vitality Wellness.

This is my wife Kendra. Hello. Hello. I'm camera shy. This is Bernie. Don't make her out. The newest edition.

She'S six weeks old. So we, we started these new smoothie features. Just like anything else, you gotta mix it up. And we realized like if you just make smoothie features after famous people, like they do really good. So we have a Hailey Bieber smoothie that does really well. Literally people just saw it on TikTok or whatever, they're like, I just want this smoothie. They don't even know what it is. And they come in all the time like, hey, Can I just have this smoothie? It's really popular. And then now we're making a swifty after Taylor Swift. So we're. We is very loosely defined term. My wife doesn't even know how to use a blender. My wife is the recipe person. I'm just a taste tester and advertisement. We put him on the register. That's all he's allowed to do, is take orders, and he still messes that up. Yeah, I'm a liability in the kitchen. We're getting the end.

What flavor is that? This is the vanilla ice cream. This is the Magic man smoothie. And this is the secret recipe. Why do they call you the Magic Man?

I don't know.

All of my favorite stuff in one smoothie. Boom.

I'm getting ready to go to practice. So.

Wrestling practice. That's what I got for you.

Kind of. To my dad and me.

My papa said, son, don't let the man get to do what it done on me.

Won't forget you.

Won't forget you.

And I can remember the 4th of July running through the Backwood bay.

I can still hear my old hound dog.

Just a lot of small adjustments, you know, like every time that we're making contact or tying up or shooting or exchanging, like, we're both just making micro adjustments the whole time. I think in wrestling, there's nothing, just such thing as perfection. It's just not possible. But, you know, we're trying to create as many good habits as we can.

I just think I pay attention to little details. You know, rarely am I just.

Doing something to do it. I mean, there's a reason for every. Every time I place my hand, every. Every time I move my feet, every reaction that I see is setting something else up, you know, so trying to think two, three, four things ahead. But I can score with my first thing. You know, if it takes three or four, five more things to do that, then that's what it takes. So I think just trying to be skilled in all areas, as dangerous offensively as I am defensively, trying to constantly score. So just threaten my opponents as much as I can. That's my goal.

Perfect timing. I know. What's up, dude?

What are you doing?

Why? You only have one shoe on. Most people when they. When they get, like, a property, they get a dog first, and then they kind of like move into other animals. We did opposite. We got three cows, goat, and a pig.

And we still don't have a dog, but our cows are like dogs, and the goat is definitely like a dog. Oh, Buddy. A nice, big, bloody arch.

Oh, you guys want to start a fire? If that's charged, they can go get some wood. Oh, you guys want to take a little cat? Lyn's pretty much a master at it.

All right, let's get some firewood.

All right, here you go.

Now I gotta fool you want more? Is that it? That's it.

Oh, yeah.

All right, you push it. I'll pull it.

Out.

Just right up Put all your friends and I will let go.

Bring back holes and dark memories.

Gonna rise up Turn mistakes in the glory.

That's never gonna get more it's like saying, david, hold it. Bowl and don't need any liquid. Yeah, that's not happening. Who wants the worst marshmallow? Or should I even make this fire bigger? Yeah, true. This fire is pretty weak sauce, regardless.

Yeah.

You going to eat it? No. You promise?

Fast forward.

Suddenly swallowed by signs that's.

What it looks like, huh? Yeah. This whole thing, basically every decision that I made.

For 25 years was to win this. So I think afterwards it was just. Literally just this sense of relief. Like, I remember I was 10 years old, people were saying, like, oh, that kid's gonna win the Olympics. As I got older, and the more I talked about it, the more that I was like, well, that was just the expectation, like, it's gonna happen. This kid's gonna win. It's definitely a sense of relief, excitement, joy. You know, a lot of people helped me get here to win this medal, you know, like my family and my wife, my coaches. So just grateful for all of them. And, you know, it's put me in the position, the opportunity to do something rare and win a second one consecutively. And that's new focus. This isn't the past. You know, this is, like, in my drawer most of the time, because. Doesn't do me good to, like, sit and relish on this, because this is in the past. You know, this was a big. You know, I'm super proud of this, but right now, in the present, I'm trying to do it again. We're at the M2 Training Center. It's wrestling club here in Pleasant Gap. We just finished the junior high state tournament and the high school state tournament. Now we have the youth state tournament coming up. And tonight we're on a practice with the kids. We have a great group in here. We have some of our high school kids that just competed last week and are in here helping the young kids out. We'll just focus on little details, some of the areas that we could have Done a little better last couple weekends or some things that we know we're going to see. You know, we're in Pennsylvania. It's the toughest wrestling state in the country. So at every level, you know, the kids being technically prepared have a good foundation is the most important things. And those are things that we're focused on tonight. We're doing the right stuff. We just got to execute all the way through and getting finished. Backhand contact. I'm trying to snap in that bad shot. Roll on his head to my drag, head to the ribs. I'm shelfing it above the knees and finish. And I can roll, I can punch, shelf, get my takedown. Now we're ground riding. Go.

Leaving it right. Go out, wrestle hard, wrestle. Have some fun, kick some butt. Win or lose, come in the next day, get back to getting a little bit better, right? Because it's a stepping stone to something else. But for right now, let's go out this weekend. Let's wrestle the best of our abilities. All right, great work tonight. M2 on 2, 1, 2. I like just seeing the progress. You know, I like seeing the kids coming in. It's the moment that they start to really understand the technique. And sometimes it's like after a loss where we do the stuff we talk about and then they kind of like a light bulb turns on, like, oh, that makes sense. You know, we really focus on the fundamentals here, as I think the fundamentals win at every single level. So we have good fundamentals. Like, we can be competitive in every single match. Our goal is not to have the best kids in the country or the best kids in the state at 10 years old, but we want kids that will be fundamentally sound, and they're continuing to improve over time. So their best versions are, you know, junior high and high school and beyond into college. The ultimate goal here is kids get scholarships and get opportunity to wrestle in college. And.

You know, if there's 60 kids here tonight, I mean, a lot of these kids, even in middle school, they're going to have a lot of opportunities ahead of them with the dedication that they show. So that part's really cool. All right, he's got home. Just finished great practice at Infury Training center and got to wrap up a couple things here in the barn before going to bed. It's been a great day. Thanks for following along, and I'll see you guys.

Well, don't take a dance, Storm, you're the good one.