In January of 2012, I took up 'Amateur' wrestling. I did this, firstly, because I wanted to be much fitter than I was, not for any esoteric 'wellness' rationale, or because I wanted to look better with my shirt off. No, I had a very definite goal in mind; backflips. More specifically, aerial backflips while skiing. My wife introduced me to skiiing on our honeymoon, and after I got over the first day of insanely painful snow-ploughing, and started straight-skiing, I was hooked. I loved it more than any sport or physical activity I'd ever done, ever. Skiing is graceful and elegant, but still requires hard-core strength. It's excruciatingly technical, but once you're in a groove it's deliciously mindless and rhythmic. It's just an all-round gorgeous activity, and I wanted to do more of it, to be better at it. Mostly, though, I wanted to do completely wicked-awesome backflips.

I skied again in Italy a couple of years later and while I improved, I ran hard up against my physical capacity. My glutes and hamstrings screamed bloody murder after every day's skiing. Long sessions in the sauna and a very talented Polish masseur got me through, but only just. I knew I needed to be fitter, stronger, more flexible.

In late 2011, by blind chance one day, I opened the local paper, the Fremantle Gazette, rather than tossing it out immediately. In it, I read an article about an amateur wrestling club, about 5 minutes from my house. I'd been vaguely interested in wrestling for a while, mostly because my brother is a Pro Wrestler, "Bruiser" Barry Schmidt. He had no amateur background, and was interested in learning the skills. I though that it'd be a great way to get a workout partner, and the motivation that comes from not wanting to be beaten by your little brother. So I e-mailed Chris Butler, the coach and set up a time for us to start in January 2011, at the start of a new term. Barry was in Japan, training with a puro dojo at the time, and was meant to come a little later, with special consideration being given for his advanced fitness and vague familiarity with amateur wrestling.

My brother never came to a single session.

We're now about 6 months into my 'career' as an amateur wrestler, and the operative word is 'amateur'. I am not a good wrestler. Frankly, I am terrible; barely a step up from abysmal. But I've improved, and I suspect that if I stick at it, I'll continue to. I'm also fitter and stronger than I've ever been in my life. Since starting wrestling I've dropped from a little north of 95kgs to 82kgs, at 16.9% Bodyfat (according to my dodgy bio-impedance scale) this morning. I've got a long, long way to go, but I'm heading there.

To put it in real-life perspective, when I started in the seniors class we had a 14 year old wrestling up in our group, who would routinely pin me in practice. My last practice, we had a new starter, a strong, very fit young man, about 78-odd kilos of pure muscle, with a lot of natural talent. I pinned him.

But make no mistake, I am terrible at wrestling. As of right now, I've not scored a point in live competition. This blog is called The Worst Wrestler for a reason.

On the subject of blogs, the sad reality is that most blogs fail. I have no idea how many fail, but forced to guess, I'd estimate it's somewhere a little north of 95%. On the one hand, I just made that number up right now. On the other, I'm confident it's pretty close to the truth.

Why do blogs fail? Mostly because they deserve to. I 'blogged' - and awful, cumbersome verb - when I was a teenager, though we didn't call it that back in the internet's early days. That blog was unceremoniously abandoned, and looking back at it, I can think of no more fitting end to the inane ramblings of some idiot teenager. However, the blogs that work are ones with a point, and a definite purpose.

The purpose of this blog is two-fold. Firstly, it's to document what I learn wrestling, mainly for my own benefit. That aspect of the blog is likely to be voluminous; I have a truly phenomenal amount to learn. The second point of this blog is to follow along with my Convict Conditioning training programme, which I'm starting to help with my truly atrocious strength.

So there you have it, if you've ever been interested in what competition looks like from the losing side, this is the blog for you. In every competition someone's got to come last, and chances are it's going to be me.