2015
Setbacks
Everyone has them, including personal trainers. We’re all human. This blog is to show you that everyone including elite athletes experience setbacks.
Recently I took a kettlebell certification called Strong First (SFG) it’s the gold standard towards kettlebell certifications. Think of black belt in karate.
I have been training really hard for this- three years but I knew going into the weekend I was going to have a problem with the snatch test, but I wasn’t worried about it because at that point I knew there was no use in worrying over something that would be five minutes long when the whole weekend was going to be just as challenging.
The snatch test is 100 kettlebell snatches with a 24 kg kettlebell that you have to perform in under 5 minutes. Seems impossible but it’s not it really comes down to your breathing and that was my downfall. To give you a little insight the U.S. Secret Service they have to do 200 snatches with a 24kg in under 10 min! Now that’s intense!
So I ended up doing 32, I wasn’t worried about it because I knew I had some time to get it together. I spent the last three months since then trying to get 100 I’m getting better but I’m still not there.
Check out these video’s the first one is about two months ago and the second video is me doing 65 snatches that I performed two weeks ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0Gt2xlP7x
I am improving tremendously but I didn’t get certified because my time is up. Am I disappointed? Yes but I’m not giving up.
In basic training in the military I had a HUGE setback and I think how I dealt with that helped me deal with everything else comes my way because really it pales in comparison.
Going into basic training I had no idea they had a marking system kind of like school – if you screw up so many times you get kicked out. Well I made it all the way to week nine, I remember there was two more weeks left and then graduation. I had a lot of marks against me then stuff like bad inspection, my boots weren’t shiny enough etc. They decided to kick me out where I had to start on another platoon from scratch. Week one, day one and the kicker was they also kicked out a fellow platoon mate for attitude and they made him start two weeks ahead of me, why did they do that? I had no idea.
But I could of quit and blamed the system but I didn’t because I had my DREAM job to be a firefighter! Just to prove my point I started all over again with a new platoon from scratch with no marks against me the second time around.
My point behind this story is everyone receives setbacks- it is how you deal with them that makes you unique.
