Oh boy, what a competition we had! Last month when I had announced about the February online competition, I did not expect the kind of response that we got. Well, simply the name of one of the participants, that is Ivan Denisov should explain how big the competition got. The absolute world record holder in all the three classic lifts took part in our competition, and took it to another level altogether.
Overall we had participants from 10 countries, and we had almost 90 entries from all the competitors. In the final results tally, India took the top spot, with Norway and Sweden taking the second and third positions. To get the full country and individual results click here.
Overall I got the opportunity to meet some amazing people from all over the world, and witnessed how supportive and nice the global kettlebell community is. During the month, the word about the competition kept spreading, and more and more people got involved in it. It was just so wonderful and exciting! It was also nice to see that in some places, they took the opportunity of this competition and organized a mini competition in their own studio/gym involving their students. You could see the excitement and the fun that they were having while lifting, and that made it worth the time and effort that we put in to organize this event.
The high point of the competition was probably the participation of Ivan Denisov, who just blew his competition away. Here are his scores, in jerks he jerked two 36 kg kettlebells for 85 reps, and got 425 points. In snatch, he snatched a 32 kg kettlebell for 130 reps and secured an astonishing score of 520 points! You can see his jerk video here and his snatch video here.
There was also a Norwegian lifter who really impressed me and also inspired everyone. His name is Christian Einarsen from Norway. This guy did 1 arm snatch with 24 kgs, and got 114 reps in 5 minutes. While that itself is really impressive, what made it more impressive is the fact that he does not have 4 fingers in his right hand, and only has the thumb finger. Yes, you read it right, he only has a thumb finger in his right hand. Check out his super impressive video here. His performance was enough to inspire anyone to stop making excuses and start working out.
Regarding my personal performance, I was most glad to hit my jerk PR of 27 reps, and be able to last 5 minutes for the first time with double 32's. The 5 minutes went pretty fast and gave me a lot of confidence, and got me a bronze in my category. Besides the jerk, I won a silver in snatch, and a gold in 1 arm clean and press. Most of my students who took part also won some medal or another, which made me feel proud and happy.
Overall, the experience was great, and the positive feedback that we got made it even more special. We are already planning for another such event in August or September, and this time we will likely keep 10 minute events too. Before that we will be doing some "mini" events. To stay informed and to take part, I would request you to join our group on Facebook- Kettlebells India.
As I said earlier in the year, competitions can bring the best out in you, and if you train with seriousness, then do try and plan to take part in some athletic competition this year. You will be glad that you did, and your performance will only get better.
Click here to see the final results sheet.
