Training in kettlebell lifts gets to be a bit compulsive. Your vision can get clouded by the next weight, always just out of reach, or the next competition. If you genuinely want to work and make progress, you will find the input of an experienced coach invaluable. Even if you don’t start off with the same mother tongue (and Russian isn’t mine!), you will start to find you have a shared language in kettlebells. He talks, you listen, potentially you both learn (but you DEFINITELY do).

So, although I don’t have a huge ego, and certainly would not set myself up as any kind of guru, maybe I thought I could sort out my own training successfully. But then getting sick this last year definitely clouded my judgement as to what I could achieve (always the optimist!), I found myself getting despondent as my strength failed, and I found I needed more input to help me get back on track.

Now, with health recovering rapidly, I find that I appreciate the contribution of a coach even more than I expected because the extent of my ambition has been creeping up on me and taken me by surprise. If I want to get serious, I want to listen to a serious coach. It’s massively productive to hear the opinion of someone so much more knowledgeable: when to up the weights, when to sit where you are, and how to plan your week’s training, because it’s hard to see it dispassionately when you’re focusing so hard on getting well as much as attaining what you want. A blast of reality, mixed with a firm encouragement to progress, could give you the definitive strategy to move forward, and the informed provision when things don’t go according to plan.

Over the last few weeks, that very encouragement given in a phase of recovery has seen me go up from 10 and 14kg to 20 and 24kg. On my own, I should certainly have played it safe for longer. So, coaching has taken me to the next level, and left me wanting to achieve yet more. Can’t wait for 2013.