When we asked Shaban Tërstena about his formula for success, I had a personal reason to listen. He is the father of my close friend and business partner Ilir Tërstena. In October 2022, I wrote down the lessons from our conversation.
The stories were specific: training during a flight, seeking out difficult opponents and mentally working through a fight before stepping onto the mat. Those details say more than a list of motivational words.
First, the right title: Olympic champion
Tërstena won freestyle wrestling gold at the 1984 Olympics and silver in 1988, representing Yugoslavia. These results are recorded by Olympedia. My original headline called him a world champion; Olympic champion is the accurate title here.
The training story I wrote down
In my notes, he described training even during a flight from the former Yugoslavia to the United States, while other passengers shook their heads. I am retelling his account from our conversation, not presenting an independently documented episode.
What stayed with me was his willingness to prepare when the circumstances were inconvenient. The useful question for my own work is smaller than that extraordinary example: what preparation can I still do when the day does not go to plan?
Study the opponents you fear
Another part of my account concerned his decision to train with opponents he feared. He focused on learning from strong wrestlers, studying their movements and understanding how they fought.
That makes “face your fears” more concrete. There was something to study: an opponent’s movement, a response, a weakness in his own preparation. Admiration alone would not do that work.
Rehearse the decisions
I also recorded how he imagined a fight the night before: possible moves, tactics and how he might respond. My original post used the word “manifestation.” The specific practice he described was mental rehearsal. Imagining a victory and preparing a response to an opponent are different things.
These are lessons from one conversation, not a complete explanation of his career. I have removed the match totals and all-time age-record claim from the original article because I could not substantiate them.
My own training offers a much more modest example of checking the work: the squat depth I needed to improve during HYROX preparation.
