About Ilya Khlybov and his sports (and not only) achievements

Ilya Khlybov from Verkhnyaya Pyshma has recently finished his sports career. Back in 2016 in Bulgaria he won his fifth gold medal at the World Sambo Championship, and prior to that, he became Russian champion six times, took first place twice at the European Championship, and also became the first in his weight category at the World Student Games in Kazan.

Despite such a brilliant career, Ilya Khlybov doesn't find life after quitting professional sports terrifying:

“On the contrary, it opens my eyes and makes me pay attention to many things that I never paid attention to before. When I was a sportsman, all my thoughts were concentrated on the competitors and the approaching Russian and World Championships. Usually in the course of preparation to competitions I cared about nothing but sports – so I didn't distract my attention from my main goal – to win. But now that I've become a coach, I feel much more focused on my trainees. You start to think more about how to push the younger generation forward, so they get education, become champions, be good athletes and just be good people.

It wasn't easy to make the decision to stop professional wrestling, but in some ways it was caused by previous injuries and the lack of new goals. After winning the gold medal five times at the World Championships, it gets a bit boring to lose weight on a regular basis. But I want to move forward and to keep growing. Besides, many years ago I wanted to become a coach (since I was 13, as seems to me). Being a coach is great thing: there's a lot of work to do! And you get to know life from a different angle.

I can’t say that anything has drastically changed. You just look at all aspects differently – more mature, and set priorities differently. I began to value my time and would rather spend free minutes with my family or parents, playing with my child, than go to a cafe, movie or disco.

What is more difficult to be a coach or a sambo wrestler? Of course, to be a coach, because I’m still just learning this new for me profession, but every day it is getting easier. First of all, I had to establish contact with my pupils, find a common language and only after that to form their path in sport. It was important both for me and for them to understand what they need, what they train for, what they can and what they want from life and from sport.

I work with different age groups, and they differ from each other. For example, with young guys I mainly focus on throwing techniques, painful holds, and pay a lot of attention to the basics of sambo. With grown-ups, I pay more attention to tactics during fights and study different peculiarities, such as holds, for example.

Where does the zeal to be a coach come from? The main thing is my love for this sport. I also wanted to feel what it would be like to be on the other side – not as an athlete, but as a coach.

In general, as a child I had a wide choice – soccer, basketball, skiing, karate and even judo, and, by the way, at first they did not want to take me to sambo class, saying that I was too young and weak, although at the age of 6 or 7 I already was able to do pull-ups. But in the end I realized that I loved this sport and I wanted to be in it. So this is one of the rare cases in which I became the one I wanted to be”, - Ilya says.

Source:  NEW START: Life after Sports