Top 5 Things I WISH I Knew Before My First Comp

Welcome to the Platform Podcast where we talk to coaches, athletes, experts, and real people to learn about their approaches to training, nutrition, mindset, and much more. I'm your host, Jordan Kundeerite, founder and head coach of the Twin Cities Catapult Club, and I'm on a mission to help others build sustainable healthy lifestyles. Now, we are only three days away from the Twin Cities Catapult Open 2021 and I cannot tell you how excited I am. We are going to be lifting in person with about 25 lifters, as well as about 20 plus virtual submissions that are also coming in. So I am very, very grateful to everyone who signed up to compete and I am incredibly excited to see you all to meet you in person, to lift with you, to watch your performances, and I hope it is a fantastic experience for everyone. I want to give a shout out to the sponsors, Belivator Belts, has given us two belts to give away. Fairfoot Athletic Shoes has given us gifts certificates for six pairs of versus athletic training shoes. Pro Kettlebell, Nikolai Pushlov has shipped us some sets of his Pro Kettlebells in both sizes, so the smaller size and as well as the larger size. So we are going to have sets of those to use. 27 degrees of peril for customizing our shirts and designing the logo. You can order those directly from his website. I'll put a link in the show notes. Nathan Cameron, Cameron Customs for giving us two Caddy Rock plate loadable maces that you can use as well as a Gaspari nutrition. So thank you very much to our sponsors. I cannot wait to get hands and swag. And I announced to all the lifters and I'll announce it to you all here that we're going to do it a little bit differently than it's been done at some other contests rather than big price packs going to the top lifters. We're going to give stuff away as a raffle drawing. If you signed up to compete, we're going to raffle off the prizes because let's be honest, the top lifters probably already have a belt. They probably already have a bunch of training here. So they probably don't need the stuff as much as somebody who's just getting into the sport competing for the first time. Maybe it's on the fence about spending the money on a elevator belt. You absolutely should, by the way, if you don't win there, they're absolutely worth the money. Or getting some careful training shoes or any of the other things, right? I want to give people prizes that might not be the top lifters, but that does not mean that we are leaving the top lifters high and dry. I am going to be giving away a cash prize to the top three coefficient lifters. First place gets $150 second place gets $100 and third place gets $50. So there's going to be cash money online for the best lifters as well. So people that come out and have a great performance are going to have a chance to win some cash as well. If you're still listening, I want to say I'm grateful for that. Thank you so much for being a listener of this podcast. The best way you could support me is to support our sponsors whose links you'll find in the episode notes. You can still register for a video submission for the Twinsies kettlebell open. I'm going to shut down that registration here at midnight tonight. So you still have one more chance to do that. And of course, if you want to step onto the platform and compete at a kettlebell sport, or if you need help with your nutrition, please reach out to me. I help athletes of all levels reach their goals without wasting time using my integrated coaching approach. Of course, you can follow me on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube at Twinsies kettlebell club, or you can email me at Twinsies kettlebell club at gmail.com. Now without further ado, I'm going to let you into this episode where I plan to reveal my top five things I wish I had known before my first come. So let's get into it. All right, welcome into the platform podcast. We are live on Facebook at the kettlebell fat last group. So if you want to see these live streams when they happen, you can go join that page sign up for that Facebook group the kettlebell fat bass group kettlebell fat blast group on Facebook. So I'm going to talk a little bit fast today because I am fucking hyped. I am so excited. I cannot even, I can't even articulate how excited I am right now. I have goosebumps right now even just just talking about it. I know I've been away for a little bit. It's been a lot of things, but a confluence of things I am obviously preparing for this competition, which is less than 72 hours away, which is crazy to me. I am so, so excited. So it's going to be on Saturday. We're recording this on Wednesday morning. It was 1134 AM local time right now. And first bells go up at 1 p.m. on Saturday. I got friends starting to arrive in the next couple of days. I'm getting ready to transport bells over to the athlete lab and make final preparations for the for the event. So I am incredibly excited about that. I cannot wait to see you all here. It is going to be so fun. It's going to be crazy. There's going to be some awesome performances. I am quite certain. Some people are going to come out and put on some great, great lifts. And I want to thank everybody that's coming out. I really hope you have a have a great time. And, you know, thank you to all of our sponsors for sponsoring the event. I listed them in the intro to the show. So I won't I won't I won't list them out again. Actually, no, I will because there are sponsors and I want to give them the shadows right bellow. And I want to thank Joe Honnings. He's one of my lifters and he's going to be here competing in a couple of days. And he was like, gave me this idea is like, I really you should do an episode on like what are the things that you wish you knew prior to your first competition. And I was like, that is a great idea because that's one of the questions I always ask people right is like, if you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be or if you're working with a new lift or what would be the one piece of advice would be so this is kind of a spin off on that right. What are the top five things that you wish you knew prior to your first competition. So I'm going to I'm going to give you those first I'm going to take a drink here. We're going to see if I can do an announcer voice. Number five. Don't show up. I'm sorry, don't sign up for all three lifts your first competition. I made that mistake. The first time I competed. I was like, Oh, you can, you can do three lifts. Cool. I'm going to get my fucking money is where I'm going to make sure I get my bank for my, but my $75 is not going to be wasted. I'm going to sign up for all three lifts. And that is exactly what I did. And as you can imagine, it did not end well. The, the order I did them in was was long cycle snatch and then jerk. I don't know why I signed up for him in that order. I didn't sign up for triathlon. I mean, you know, at that time, I don't, I don't think triathlon was even really a thing at that time when I, when I signed up for my first comp. I don't think there was an official event called triathlon, but I was just like, I'm going to, I'm going to get my money's worth. So I did long cycle first because that's what I had been training for. And that went okay. And then I did snatch and that went okay as well. Actually, I finished, I finished the 10 minutes on, on snatch. I can't remember if I finished the 10 minutes on long cycle. I don't think I did, but I'm not sure. But what I can't tell you is I fucking died on jerk. Because I did not have the training base to support three 10 minutes sets, nor did I understand the physical demands that were going to be placed on my body. I didn't know what I didn't know, obviously. So I was not prepared for the physical demands that 10 minutes sets would place on my body. And then trying to do all three of them in one day is one of the hardest things you can do. It is just an incredibly challenging thing. It's what I currently try to do when I compete. I try and do triathlon because I'm crazy like that. And since I'm not exceptional at any one lift, I figure I'll try and be good at all three of them. I also like the training style of training for all three lifts because it helps keep me, keeps me healthy, balanced, more engaged, et cetera. Things that we've talked about here on the podcast with guests and, you know, I've articulated a little bit about my philosophy and why I trained that way. But with that said, if it's your first competition, do not sign up for all three lifts, especially not 10 minutes sets because, and all likelihood, you don't have the training base. And you probably also don't have the technique down in all three lifts. You might have one lift focus on one lift. I usually recommend beginners start with long cycle because there's the most margin for error. There's the most opportunity to spread the suffering around a little bit jerk. There is no opportunity for that. There's the most margin for error long cycle. It has the least, the least mobility require has less mobility requirements than jerk. I don't know if it has more or less mobility probably has more mobility requirements than snatch but snatches a very highly technical lift and long cycle is as well. There's not as highly technical as snatch so usually recommend people start with long cycle. If you want to play with a second lift and sign up for a second lift, cool, right, but make one lift your primary focus focus on long cycle or focus on focus on snatch obviously work with your coach. So and talk about what lift should be your focus, but I would recommend that you sign up for one primary lift and you can sign up for a secondary lift for fun, but do not sign up for all three lifts, expecting that you're going to go in and perform right. If you want to do a ten minute set on long cycle and then sign up for a five minute jerk and a five minute snatch, okay, you can do that. I guess that's a way you could sign up for all three lifts, but the point is don't expect to be competitive in all three lifts. Don't don't set that expert expectation for yourself because you will set yourself up for failure. It is not very likely that that is going to end well for you. Trust me, I've been there, learn from my mistake. Number four, take a bit longer to warm up than you usually do. The reason I say that is a comp day is the peak. It's when you want to perform your best. So you really want to make sure that you set yourself up for the best opportunity to perform your best. The long warm up, a good warm up is one of the keys to that. Right. So you want to make sure that you have enough time to warm up. So I would recommend that you actually start a little bit sooner and set aside more time than you think you need because you need to get to the venue. So you can figure out your flight time. Hopefully it's been sent out to you ahead of time. Flight times have been sent out for the for the open. I will be sending out finalized flight times because we've got a few changes as people gave me feedback, but I will be sending out finalized flight times. But you'll have to you'll have to check your flight times. The prep your bells, you have to get familiar with the facility, find out where the warm up area is, what's available to you. Right. The time can go by faster than you think. And the last thing that you want is to be rushing through your warm up and to get a short warm up or to get a warm up that really gets your heart rate too high. You need to take the time to slowly build your heart rate to get your muscles warm right just set aside more time than then you think you need. Because you never want to be rushed right so that that warm up is going to be super important and it's important on comp day we all know that in practice and in training a lot of times warm ups. Hopefully you take the time to warm up very, very well for every practice, but if your life is anything like mine sometimes you just don't have time to dedicate to an extended warm up I always warm up but instead of it being 30 minutes sometimes it's 15 sometimes it's 10 right occasionally it's five and those days usually don't go well so I try and make sure I give myself at least 10 15 minutes to get warmed up so a little bit longer than you think you need to warm up set aside extra time take it slow build your heart rate up I'm not saying I'm not saying do a different warm up routine I'm just saying give yourself more time to do it to go through all the things because part of being prepared for your lift doesn't even have anything to do with the actual physical warming up it's the getting comfortable with the venue finding all your stuff getting your bells prepped training, trucking all of those other things as well as getting yourself physically ready to go so I generally recommend starting so whatever whatever your usual warm up time is add like 25 to 30% to that I'm not saying double it right but just add like 25 to 30% to your warm up time so give yourself a little bit more time because it's going to help you more warm and be prepared to perform at the peak okay so that's tip number four very very important number three set aside time to calm yourself down now that one might sound weird to you guys but this is one of those things that I have really found helps my athletes we want general excitation level to be lower then it's usually higher on comp day which means you come out hot right means your heart rate your heart rate comes comes out higher than it usually is so if you're baseline heart rate in training is 80 beats per minute you might find that you start at 90 95 even 100 beats per minute so set set set aside time to I mean I'm actually going to adjust and I can say to calm yourself down to get yourself in the right head space because as I talked about with Dan John on his episode some athletes need to be pumped up some people are just so calm that they actually need they need some excitation they need they need somebody to jack him up right some people like myself are wired you know very very high and they need to take time to take some breaths calm yourself down get your mind right get your heart rate down because for me I will come out I've come out in zone two before which is crazy especially since you know in a long cycle set or in a kettlebell set you're going to end up in zone five so the start and zone two is bad you come out you come out that that pumped up that jacked up you're going to you're going to be in for a world heart so you want to make sure that your general excitation level is at the appropriate level for you so if that means that you need to pump yourself up a little bit or if it means you need to calm yourself down a little bit take the time to do it set aside time specifically for that I like to set aside time to visualize my set so that means I need an extra 10 minutes in addition to my warm up time so if I need for it you know if I typically take 30 minutes to warm up was my ideal for practice and I add you know 25% to that night so I'm doing you know I'm doing a 45 minute warm up right then I need to add another 10 minutes on that for visualization and to get my mind right before my set that means I need to give myself a full hour prior to my set in order to be in the right head space for my set right so think about these things ahead of time have a plan right and part of the reason I sent out the flight schedule so far in advance is so that I could get feedback from people on if they needed changes made or if they needed more time between sets and I did have I did have some people reach out to me and say hey you know can you give me more time between between my jerks my jerks set in my sand set or my long cycle set in my sand set right because if you need that time ask for it worst thing I could have said is no sorry this is all I can do but most organizers like myself are going to try and be flexible because we want people to have a good we want people to have a good performance we want people to have a good time we don't want it to be rushed we want them to do their best right so think about how much time you need for your warm up and don't be afraid to ask for it but if you're only doing one or two lifts and there's plenty of time just make sure that you start on time central arm on your phone to remind you to start your warm up right because honestly in the height of a competition you can get caught up and watching somebody else's set or it's a lifter that you've really wanted to see lift and they're on the platform you know you might need to walk away to get started on your warm up to make sure that you're so that you're focused on yourself and that you're that you're getting yourself the time that you need to get warmed up and get yourself in the right head space. So set aside time for mental preparation not just physical preparation set aside time to get your mind right before you step on the platform. Okay so that's that's tip number three so we've got don't don't sign up for all three lifts take a little bit longer to warm up set aside time to get your mind right. Alright we interrupt this episode to give a shout out once again to our sponsors for the 2021 Twin Cities kettlebell open. Thank you very much to Dennis Vasiliv, Belovator Bells and the IKO for helping us put on this event. Thank you to Barefoot Athletic for the shoes they make the best barefoot training shoes that you can use highly recommend them especially for snatch, squats, dead lifts and any barefoot type of activity. Thank you to Nathan Cameron and Cameron Customs for the shoulder rock plate loadable maces. Thank you to Sean from 27 degrees apparel for designing our logo for the event as well as the t-shirts you can still order those shirts customizable on the back from his website at 27 degrees.ca. And thank you to Nikolai Poochlove from Seattle kettlebell club and pro kettlebell for providing us the pro kettlebells to use at the competition really excited to put hands on those and he has been working his butt off to try and get those things out the door after dealing with some major supply chain and foundry issues. So I'm really excited that he has been able to overcome that and I really want to thank him for all of his hard work and very, very much appreciated. So thank you very much Nikolai and last but not least, Kasparin Nutrition for their ongoing support and I look forward to seeing you all at the competition. Thought further ado, let's get back into this episode. Number two, don't change things on comp day. God damn it. Let me say it one more time for the people in the back. Don't change things on comp day. Body Hicks, I'm looking at you changing to changing your chalk the day of a competition. What are you thinking? Sorry buddy. I know you're listening. I gotta give you a little shit. And honestly, this can't be a little bit challenging. There are some things that are inside of your control and there are some things that are not. When you go to a competition, they may not have your preferred style of bells and you're probably not packing up your own kettlebells to bring them to the competition. Some competitions don't even allow you to do that. So, you're probably not going to get hands on exactly the bells that you want. You can look ahead of time. What kind of bells are going to be provided and you can try and practice with those. But what I mean is, don't change anything in your routine. Don't change anything that you have control over on comp day. So, don't try new shoes on comp day. Don't lift with a belt for the first time on comp day. Don't don't change chalk on comp day. Don't decide you're going to try, you know, a new pre workout supplement or you're going to eat a different breakfast. Right. You're going to, you know, try and stick to your routine. Your body's performed best when we are in a routine and competitions in general are outside of our normative routine because we're going to a different venue. Most of the time, you're traveling somewhere for it. Right. You're, you're not going to the place that you normally practice that perform that. There's already changes to your routine, you're probably sleeping in a different bed, et cetera, et cetera. So keep as many things as possible, the same. This is one thing I learned a great appreciation for as a college athlete, especially traveling for school, right for football games and track meets in school. One of the things that our coaches tried to do was have a routine for us on the road. Right. So that we had the same lights out time. We had breakfast. Right. They tried to keep things the same. We had a walkthrough, you know, et cetera. We get to the stadium a certain amount of hours prior to, and it's always the same amount of time. The warm up routine stayed the same. Right. We try and keep the routine as close to what it would be if we were at home hosting the game. Right. Because it leads to better comfort levels, it leads to higher level of performance. Your body knows what to expect. It knows what is coming about. Right. It helps get you prepared. Right. And it helps minimize the distraction and the disruption from the things that you can't control. Right. Like different bells, different venue. The music choices. Right. The chalk that's provided at a venue might be different than what you use. You can bring your own chalk. That's fairly easy to do. You don't, you don't bring a big kilo bag, especially if it's unlabeled and just powderized because that gets you strip search to TSA, speaking from experience. So mystery bags of white powder generally are frowned upon. They do even look questionably on them, even if they're labeled, you know, Viking chalk, they'll still probably look questionably on it. But, you know, that's okay. Offer offer the TSA a line of chalk and see how they do. But you can bring your own chalk. So do that. But keep things as, as close to your normal routine as you possibly can, because it's going to help maximize your comfort level. It's going to help maximize your performance. Okay. So once again, don't change things on comp day. Stick to your routine. Don't do things differently. Don't change your warm up. Stick to the routine. Do what you normally do to prepare yourself. Just give yourself a little bit more time. Right. Those are the previous, the previous tips, right, setting aside time to calm yourself down or get your head right and taking a little bit time to warm up, not changing the routine, just giving yourself more time for that same routine. And last but not least, number one, don't come out too fast. Let's say that again. Don't come out too fast. Have a plan for the fact that it's comp day, and you're going to be excited. Even if you took the time to get your mind right, when you step on the platform, people are watching, the music is pumping, the judges looking at you, right, it gets my heart rate up, even just saying that right now, I'm mentally, I can, I can see it in my head and my heart rate starts to go up, it starts to get elevated, I get the goosebumps rate. Know that that is going to happen. Know that if you enjoy this sport and if you enjoy competing, you're going to get excited. And if it's your first competition, you're going to be fucking nervous, I guarantee you, I don't know anybody who wasn't nervous their first time competing. That's okay. It's normal. It means you're alive. But prepare for that and plan your pace accordingly. Joe Daniels had a great saying on Facebook or Instagram the other day when we were talking about coming out, you know, somebody came out too hot and training on their jerk set and he said, it's like biting it, it's like biting into a hot pocket, that's, that's too hot. You can't unburn your tongue or you can't unburn the roof of your mouth, right. If you come out too hot in the first couple of minutes and you're going too fast, your heart rate gets high. You can't slow down enough to get your heart rate back down. You're, you're just not going to be able to do it. You can always go faster, you can always step on the gas. But you can't, you can't successfully get your heart rate down mid set if you come out too, too fast, it just doesn't, it just doesn't happen. You can come out too fast, plan on it. No, and this is something I work with with with my athletes all the time. We, we figure out what is the strategy to get you to the number that you that you want to get to. What's the target that we're aiming for and what is the strategy and I can guarantee you that minute, one minute, two, those first two minutes are almost always slower than the pace that we need to average. There are very few athletes that I'm comfortable with coming out at the pace that they need to sustain. That's not to say there aren't exceptions, there are people that are very much like metronomes and are just very, they're very controlled, but they're usually experienced withers too, or they're experienced athletes, people who are experienced with pacing, and they're used to it. I would say 90% of the people that I work with, I recommend that they come out below the pace that they need to average for the set to the number. But even, even the athletes that that I allowed to come out at that pace, we don't come out fast, we don't say we need to average eight RPMs and come out at nine or 10 in minute one, we started eight and we just hold eight. We don't, we don't, we don't come out fast, they don't start too fast, they just start on pace right so most people I recommend starting a little bit slower right so say you want to get to pace eight for the set usually what I say is okay started six for minute one minutes minute two we go to seven. We check in at the end of two minutes and see how we're feeling so long as everything's going okay, then we go to eight and then we go eight until half time you know at five minutes we check in again how are we feeling at pace eight. Then you have the choice of either accelerating if you need to accelerate or the goal was to accelerate from there where you can sustain or if you're not feeling good, you can back off right we want to. We want to check in and see right and then we go and we check in again I usually have people go from from minute five to minute seven. At the pace we decided half time at that that they decided half time while they're on the platform and then we check in again minute seven minute eight we just try and make sure we survived that minute. Then we check in again when there's two minutes left and decide whether or not we want to start picking up the pace sustain pace or whether we need to back off and the last minute we always try and finish with the flurry we always try and finish fast that that's how we approach it in the Twin Cities kettlebell club that's how I approach it with my athletes that's how I approach it when I'm coaching people. But it all starts with it's all built on the foundation of not coming out too fast understanding that you're likely going to be excited you're likely going to be nervous and not coming out of the gates too fast because you can't unburn your mouth you can't get your heart rate down right you got a plan for that and know that you're going to be excited know there's going to be an adrenaline dump right so plan for it strategize for it pace for it you'll be more successful. Okay, so those were my top five things that I wish somebody had told me before my first competition number five don't sign up for all three lifts number four take a little bit longer to do your warm up routine set aside time to get your mind right is number three don't change things on competition day is number two and the number one thing is don't come out too fast. Manage your pacing know that you're going to be excited don't come out too fast and I might give you one more bonus one and this is one this is one that might be might be controversial for some people but you don't have to finish the time everybody everybody looks at finishing the time as this as this great uh sacred cow I guess is what I'll say in in kettlebell sport that you need to finish the 10 minutes don't get me wrong finishing the 10 minutes is the goal um because typically people who finish the time get more reps than people that don't but it is also very true that for some people um they feel better and perform better coming out at a faster pace for a shorter period of time I mean it's just like it's just like anything else there are sprinters there are marathon runners some people feel better going fast and they can go fast for a short period of time there are some people that are marathon runners and they can go steady at a for extended periods of time right so if you know that you can go eight rpm's on long cycle for eight minutes and hit 64 reps or you have the choice and you're like well I really want to finish the time so I'm going to back my pace down to six rpm's and you go to six rpm's and you make it to minute seven minute eight and you're struggling because you're going slow you're still under tension that same amount of time but you're going slower you're not performing as many reps and then you get to to minute nine and you've performed 54 reps and you don't finish the 10th minute or you don't have anything left in the tank to sprint minute 10 right so if you can hold eight rpm's for eight minutes and get 64 reps or you can go finish the time but only get 60 reps which is better while the point of the sport is to get as many reps as possible in the time it's not just to finish the time finishing the time is a mechanism by which most people get more reps but finishing the time is not the goal in and of itself the goal is more reps right so you don't have to finish the time I know that's controversial there'll be a lot of coaches that might disagree with me there might be some orthodox lifters that disagree with me and that's cool hit me up give me comments tell me I suck tell me why I'm wrong that's fine we'll talk about it but the goal is to lift the most amount of reps you can in the time specified not finish the time so all right that is it for this week's episode of the platform podcast thank you for your patience I know it took a little hiatus there for for a little bit but coming back at you going to record some more stuff probably interview somebody either at the competition or before or after the competition maybe a couple of somebody's we'll see I'll have my microphones charged ready to roll so thank you all very very much and I cannot wait to see you at the Twin Cities kettlebell open and otherwise if you can't make it or you're competing in Budapest good luck hit me up let me know how things are going and I look forward to connecting with y'all soon make the last one your best one y'all peace and don't forget to follow us on social media at Twin Cities kettlebell club and if you want to step under the platform and competing kettlebell sport please reach out to me until next time