Kettlebell Sport & Recovery

My Ghost Trip to the Bay: Part 1

My first lifting coach died this past week. I don’t know and won’t know details. It’s another one of those deaths that I have to let go of, with no closure or life-lesson bow, just acceptance and moving on. Juliet was the one who got me into kettlebells.

If you know me in person, you’ve heard me talk about kettlebell sport, but you’re probably still unsure of what it is and why I won’t talk about something else more socially welcoming, like my theory that all Sasquatch are female. You may not even know what a kettlebell is. You’ve been barraged by my detailed description when all you asked was “how was your weekend?”

This is me. That cute lil bell is 32kg. It is an unforgiving weight that does not suffer a fool. Lowering it without dropping it is the hardest part to learn.

But have no fear. This is more about what the sport has meant to me than what it is. You don’t have to know the difference between a jerk and a snatch nor do you need to know who Ivan Denisov is. This is not so much a sports article as it is a story of grief, loss, and achievement.

The beginning

I met Juliet in 2010 through a recommendation from another recovering addict. I wanted someone who wouldn’t judge me on how out of shape I was, who understood that it’s common for people to get sober and then gain a ton of weight over the years, who would be familiar that a lot of us have the dietary habits of a third grader. As a 12 stepper, it’s just easier for me to take instruction from another one of “us.”

Juliet had a small personal training space in Berkeley. Honestly, I didn’t think much of it when I first went in there. After all, I was used to warehouse-sized gyms with floors of equipment. Wouldn’t I need that much stuff to get in shape? The place had no machines, and not much in the way of barbells.

I told her I had a gym membership, that I worked out three times a week, but I had gained five pounds a year in sobriety, and now, ten years later, I was 50 pounds heavier than when I stopped drinking. I wanted to dump the weight and see if I could get in shape with some guidance.

“I’m really into these right now,” she said, waving her hand at the racks of kettlebells.

“Sounds good,” I said, unsure, but willing to take suggestions.

We started with a smaller weight, 12kgs, and the basic movement called a swing. In a few minutes, I was pouring sweat—I’m not that sweaty of a guy. I perspire, but I usually don’t have the sweat rivers coming down my face. It was kicking my ass. And “the light” went off.

“The light” is how addicts describe the first time getting high. A light went off in my brain the first time I got drunk in a trailer park and I knew I had found The Solution. I spent the next 15 years chasing, getting, and losing that feeling.

I knew, somehow, this kettlebell thing could fix what was wrong with me physically. Before I was done with that first set, I knew I had found a new part of my life.

I spent a lot of time on YouTube, watching poorly videotaped competitions from Russia and Eastern Europe where kettlebell sport is popular. I became familiar with the top names of both past and present sport. I read all the blog posts I could from these Russians, looking for any kind of edge in my training.

I wanted to compete as well. I’m an American athlete—I demand a trophy.

The Mental Part of Lifting

There are ranks in kettlebell sport. These are in categories of men and women, weight classes, bell weights, lift types, and event times. I could spend pages outlining all these for you, but let’s just say you pick a lift, use the lightest possible bell allowed for your category, and do the best you can. Then, before the next comp, you train to get the next rank. And if you are at that top rank, you can move up a bell weight.

In your mind, it’s easy to think the 16kg bell is half as hard to lift as the 32kg bell, since it’s half the weight, but I lifted the 16s at my first comp, and it took over a decade to work up to the 32s. On your first day, we’ll put an 8kg in your hand and show you the basics. Even if you come in strong, the bell lifts are awkward. With each new bell, you have to fix a flaw in your technique as the new weight is unforgiving of your old form. You will feel like a champion until we add 4kg to your burden, and you will then feel like an idiot who can’t complete a basic lift.

And somewhere in the mental trickery of the sport is where recovering drug addicts and alcoholics thrive. That same mechanism that made me think that after nine bad nights drinking that the tenth day would be okay is the same mental equipment that allowed me to approach a lift day after day with the firm belief that I could “beat it” this time. This weird mind circus of a sport discourages most, and they go back to Crossfit or hot yoga or wherever they came from, where progress is clear and everyone in the class keeps looking better. But for weirdos like Juliet and I, it scratched that junky itch we both had.

There are so many days I want life to be manageable and fair, but that’s not how life wants to be. But the bells are the same weight every day, they’re in my garage waiting for me, and I have a training notebook full of workouts that show my progress. In times of chaos, they are iron angels of consistency.

To get a pair of 32kg bells overhead, I can’t think about other problems—I only have one problem, and that’s 140 unforgiving pounds that I have to guide through the motions. For one training session, I have to leave my other problems outside the garage and just lift. Then, when I leave the workout, I have a choice to pick those problems back up or leave them there—depending on the problem, sometimes it chooses for you. But at least for the 60 minutes of workout, I get relief that I assume others feel through prayer or meditation.

What Happened

Years later, I showed up at the gym, and from the way everyone was milling about and the looks on their faces, I knew something was very wrong.

Juliet had relapsed and was on a run. The details aren’t important—the crux is that she was back on the hard drugs and creating damage. Soon, she was no longer involved with her training studio and into rehab.

I had high hopes for her. She had good support, and with a lot of drug-free time in her past, the most important thing was detoxing, followed by getting a solid active recovery plan together. I’ve seen a lot of success with this. And she was fine for a long time, and then she wasn’t.

I don’t know how it unraveled again, but when she called me out of nowhere to ask for money for an obviously non-issue, I knew what was up. She was on another tear, and this time, my hopes lowered, as I’ve seen the pattern of chronic relapse on middle-age drug addicts end in jails, hospitals, and death.

Juliet died the week before the Cali Open in February. I don’t know the exact details but I know what part of her life led to it.  

I entered the 32kg 5-minute snatch for the competition. It was my first comp with what we consider a “professional” bell. I got the full time and 48 reps. I’m probably the only American lifter over 50 who will use this bell this year. It’s a personal benchmark. I really wish the Juliet I remember had been there to see it.