Yesterday I had the fun of introducing Adrian Gonzales to kettlebell lifting.

For those who don't know who that is, if he played for the New York Yankess he would probably be the richest and most famous baseball player in the world. As it is, he is the best player on one of the worst teams in sports in a large Navy town that is insignifant to the world at large. Baseball fans know him as an amazing athlete and one of the best pure hitters in the game.

To date, I have trained or consulted on kettlebell training/programs for 2 NFL teams, 1 NHL team, 3 MLB teams and some assorted other athletes and militarty personnel. I can say without hesitation that Adrian is the most gifted athlete I have ever worked with. Of course his KB techniques were not perfect on day 1, but he was much better than anyone I had seen during his first time touching a KB.

It will be good to hear his feedback and if we can arrange schedule wise I will work with him and his trainer with more regularity. Later I will try to get some footage of his training.

That's cool Steve,

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of training Emeka Okafor. It was the first time I got to work with someone that much taller than me . It was very interesting watching his body try to learn a new sequence of movement. It took a while for him to get the idea but once he did he looked great!

When you were working with Adrian, did he have any trouble getting the sequencing down? Or was he just so good of an athlete that he took to it naturally?

Excellent John, Okafor is a great athlete.

I have worked with quite a few taller than me

The thing about athletics is the definition of athlete is so broad.

For example you can take a great athlete and put a KB in his or her hands and all of a sudden they may not look so athletic.

In the case of Gonzales, he is a special athlete and out of all athletes, a pro baseball guy who is .300 + hitter has genetic gift of hand-eye. This separates them from all other athletes in my book. It is said that to hit a major league fastball is the hardest skill to execute in all of sports. I think it may be because many things can be trained, but that is a skill that one must be born with and no amount of training will enable the less gifted to see that ball.

Gonzales, he pretty much could do everything very quickly. Not perfect KB technique, but he could see the bell and hit the bell, so to speak. He was juggling within the first minute of touching it and he did not drop one juggle, so yeah way above the curve.

I would not expect a basketball player to be able to pick the basics up as quickly.