Ogre story part 10 – the final words

The day of lifting was intense. There were VERY talented athletes performing, someone under 70kg didi 135 jerks or so with 2×32kg. It was crazy to see that live. And I had thought originally that GS lifters were just weak and were cheating the bells up Damn, these young guys blew all the [...]

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Ogre story part 9

In the morning of the weighing we all gathered to the team USA’s hotel. Another new GS-person arrived, Peter from Canada. He was the one man team from there, so we had something in common
Also, this morning Catherines Imes and Steve Cotter arrived to the lobby. I was very nervous at first because [...]

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Ogre story part eight

The competition was two days ahead, the next day would be the weighing in Ogre. Ogre is a small village about 200km from Riga. I was told that the competition is organised by the IGSF. The team USA were repserenting NAKF, which was not a member but they had created good contacts last year in [...]

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Ogre story part 7

Back in Finland, 2006 had been a year of
progress in KB related issues.
In march, there was a first public workshop, which I also attended. It
was pretty much the same as Pavel’s Martial Power combined with Super
Joints and some kettlebell drills. But of course it was a lot better
to learn live than from a book or [...]

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Ogre story part six

I had two 32kg bells, one from Estonia and
one from Latvia. They are very rugged, but comp style. So, I used the
few weeks I had to train with those and asking lots of questions by
email and being very nervous.
Training went well, relatively speaking. The 32kgs were moving me more
than I was moving them but at [...]

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Ogre story part five

In October, after a lot of positive
pressure and encouragement from Lorraine and Steve, I finally decided
to take part in the GS world championships in Ogre. The competition
was 6 weeks away, and it had to be done with 32kg bells.
Of course, I had no illusions about my level. 24kgs were too heavy,
and my GS training experience [...]

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Ogre story part four

Well, the idea was there but because I had
burned myself out with doing my EDT too hard, the idea kind of got
buried for a while. I knew I wanted to compete but the thought of just
arranging competitions on my own seemed too much. In the spring of
2006, someone on the finnish forum suggested a group [...]

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Ogre story part three

Now, I’m not totally sure about the order
of events just now, but in the end of 2005 I read about the american
team traveling to the GS world championships in Moscow. They had a
blog up, which had stories about the preparation, the competition
experience and what happened afterwards, I was very excited, because
these people were there in [...]

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Ogre story part two

A bit of background to this.
I had started kettlebell training in the spring of 2005. My resources
were the RKC, Femme Fatale and other Pavel’s work, a finnish guide to
kb training, a Mike Mahler DVD,DD forum and a finnish forum which had
a small but relatively active section of kb training.
So, I was pretty much doing all [...]

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Ogre story part one

I’ve been thinking about writing an english
story about the Ogre competition which was in 2006 November. That’s
the first time I actually saw real GS live and also when I met Lopa,
Cate, Steve and Marty in person. I just don’t know where to start. In
2005 fall(?), I had written a message on DD about GS competitions [...]

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