I took the Strongfirst Kettlebell level 1 certification in October this past year and recently got certified in December. I am currently training for Kettlebell level 2 this April! Level 1 goes over exercises such as swings, Turkish get ups, presses, cleans, and snatches. Early on in my training career, I learned this certification was serious and took immense strength and endurance training to go through the workshop and pass. I never in a million years thought I’d be training for it.
Prior to quarantine, my friend Taylor and I had gotten into kettlebells and tried some of the prep guides Strongfirst has on their website. Even performing 1 – 2 sets of the circuit nearly killed us, but we wanted to push through and see how strong and skilled we could get! A month after starting kettlebells, quarantine happened and gyms everywhere closed. Luckily for us, we had our kettlebells and were already training with them. For months we kept up with the program. It was nice having a structured routine and program to go by and even more astonishing to see how strong we got!
Eventually we decided to do the certification since we’d been training in kettlebells for quite some time. Ideally we wanted to do the one in San Diego, since it was closer to home, but that workshop was canceled so we were headed to Tacoma for the certification. It was three intense but informative and fun days of training! We learned a lot the first two days and on the last day we had our big test to see how well we could perform our skills and a hundred snatches in under five minutes. I passed everything except for snatches. At first I was very disappointed since I was so set on going home with the certification, but quickly realized what an amazing job I did and how much I learned. After a few weeks of practicing my snatches, I submitted my video performing the test and passed! It was a great way to end the year.
Training for this certification and taking the workshop, showed me how strong and resilient I am. I also learned how versatile kettlebells are and how with the correct regressions and progressions, everyone can use them to their advantage! It took grit and determination, but I am so happy I trained and took the certification. I now have more modalities under my trainer “tool belt” and training knowledge to help myself and others.
