EP. 510: What a Five-Time National Champion Taught Me About Hunting | HOS

I want you to think back to the last time you were at full draw and something in your head started talking. Not the calm rundown of yardage and pin placement. The other voice. The one that shows up uninvited and starts narrating the worst version of what's about to happen. I always figured that voice mattered. I just wasn't consistent about doing anything with it, if I'm honest, until I sat down with Carter Starocci this summer. If you don't follow wrestling, here's what you need to know: Carter is a five-time national champion at Penn State, the first man ever to do it. By the time he was chasing that fourth and fifth title, the pressure wasn't hypothetical anymore. Every match had a target on it. I asked him what he was doing with his head between whistles, and what he told me reframed how I think about my own competition, and then how I think about hunting. The first thing he said: the words you use with yourself become true, not mystically, mechanically. Rehearse "I always blow it when they get close" for twenty seasons and your nervous system stops reacting to the deer and starts reacting to the story. Heart rate spikes early. Hands shake. You rush a shot you had plenty of time to make. The second thing cuts deeper. At his level, the difference between competitors isn't physical anymore, it's mental. Everybody left on the mat can wrestle. We've all hunted with a guy who shoots lights out in July and can't hold it together when a shooter steps out in November. It was never his form. Nobody had drilled what was supposed to run through his head in that moment. The third thing changed how I think about stand time specifically: you remove the anxiety by not making the hunt the whole goal. It's just the next rep in a career built out of reps. I felt that firsthand this year, in a BJJ tournament and out on the plains chasing a genuine giant. Neither result was the point while I was in it. That's exactly what let both of them happen. This episode builds a four-question filter for running that self-talk audit on stand, and it's not an off-season-only project. It's before, during, and after. Go build your one line. Drill it until it's automatic. It won't show up on its own the day it matters. Hunt like you train. I'll see you in October. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices