Roughly 6 weeks, that’s what we have left.
On the 1st and 2nd of August, Karsten Hugger and myself, Thierry Sanchez, will be representing Denmark at an international kettlebell competition. The ultimate test of power endurance. The event will take place in Ventspils, Latvia and is home to 7 times World Champion Vasily Ginko.
Aalborg Sportshøjskole has agreed to sponsor us for the occasion, and we will be lifting under their name. Team SPH Denmark it is!
We will be the first athletes from Denmark to compete in kettlebel sport, aka GS or Girevoy Sport. I introduced Denmark to GS only last year, while all other Scandinavian countries have already participated in competitions.
What started our interest in competition was a unofficial virtual event arranged by the Finns in December, and then the biathlon relay I organized in March.
We only started to train seriously for competition in January, and old injuries are flaring up now and then as we increase volume and intensity. Hopefully our timing we’ll be right and we’ll set new personal records when it matters!
We’ll be competing in the double jerk and snatch amongst more experienced athletes, mostly Eastern Europeans, as the sport comes from Russia.
But you have to dream big, always!
Over 200 athletes are expected. Today I bought a Danish flag 
to hang next to the others. I know people are curious to meet us and so are we!
As amateurs we’ll be lifting 24kg kettlebells for maximum repetitions in 10 minutes. If this sounds easy, keep in mind you are not allowed to rest the bells on the floor, and only allowed to change hands one in the snatch event. Also, drop the bells and you are disqualified…
Experienced lifters compete with 32kg, and quite frankly, I am glad to be an amateur!
Training for kettlebell sport is quite different from training with kettlebells for fitness as most people do it in Denmark. In my mind, if you train only for the sake of training and never compete, you can not call your self an athlete.
Strength, endurance, VO2max, a high lactate treshold, flexibility are all required factors, but in my opinion, most important is technique and the ability to relax under stress so that breathing can be optimal. The mindset is also different, as it is with endurance sports. Pushing through one’s barriers is tough.
When I teach fitness classes, I see a lot of people give up if it gets too tough or monotonous. For them, I have to keep the training challenging and fun or they won’t come back!
In kettlebell sport, you have to be able to clear the mind and keep going rep after rep, always trying to improve the numbers. If you feel like quite quiting after just 100 reps when sweat pours down your eyes , you might as well consider another sport. Top athletes might lift up to 20000kg in one training pass, training 6 times a week. That is a lot of reps…I guess that’s why there hasn’t been so many takers on my offers to compete this year. But really we all have to start somewhere. Who knows what will happen on the day? Maybe we’ll crash and burn, who cares? We’ll still be pioneers and making kettlebell history happen for Denmark!
Hopefully next year the team will be larger and we’ll have a girls team!
July 6, 2009 at 3:30 pm
[...] See the preview for the competition here [...]
August 6, 2009 at 2:40 pm
[...] Denmark and Aalborg Sportshøjskole on the kettlebell World map. 14 countries were represented in Ventspils, Latvia, and the list is growing for next [...]