I’m 42 years old, 6 feet, 220lb. I have a desk job.

I have been doing Kettlebell Axe snatches with a 24kg bell twice a week since June. I also do Easy Strength style military presses in sets of 5 with the same 24kg bell.

I live in Canada, and we got three feet of snow between December 24th and 26th.

A humble story about how awesome Kettlebell Axe is in the real world.

I am a desk manager at a car dealership. When I got to work on Christmas Eve, our customers could not even park in our lot without getting stuck! So, I grabbed a shovel and started shoveling.

I went for about an hour and long outlasted all the young guys who work for me. Then we went inside, sold some cars, and I went out alone and shoveled for another two hours. I had no time to get food (besides, I had forgotten to bring delicious leftovers from home), so I did it all without eating since Christmas dinner.

But I went home feeling pretty good about myself! I was greeted with a shovel and proceeded to shovel my own property. I thought, “The training worked!” Now I can live happily ever after.

Then it snowed another foot and a half on Christmas Day...

On the 26th, I woke up early, not feeling sore, ready to rock. I dug myself out of my own driveway and cleared all the snow. Then I went to work and found that our cars were completely buried. The snow was higher than the tires on most of them. Naturally, our plow truck was broken...

Something had to be done. So, I called my dad and asked if I could borrow his industrial snowblower. It weighs well over two hundred pounds—and that’s without a tank full of gas. He said I could, but did I have ramps to get it up into a truck bed? I did not. I told him I’d lift it.

My dad laughed at me. In his youth, he was the strongest man I’ve ever met, and his workout advice was stunningly similar to StrongFirst’s teachings. I have to admit that it hurt!

I told him I had to try. I’m proud to say, together with one of my guys, we lifted it into the truck—fairly easily, I would say!—and got it back to the dealership.

Then I started blowing snow. Our lot is about a football field in length, but even wider, and the snow was up past the tires on the vehicles. So, I sent the young, soft guys inside, and pushed that son of a you-know-what up the row, about a hundred yards, over and over and over and over again.

It was -22 degrees Celsius, and -33 with the wind chill factor (-8 Fahrenheit and -28 with the wind).

And I am pleased to tell you that my legs held out. My grip and forearms held out. My back held out. My chest and shoulders held out. My core held out. My poor, poor glutes held out. My feet, strong from training barefoot, held out. Over and over again, for hours.

Then we packed it back up and returned the snowblower to my parents.

And the insane thing was that I had so much left in the tank! I was tired, no doubt, but nowhere near my limit.

I got a good night’s sleep, and the next morning I did my 30 minutes of AXE kettlebell snatches, explosive sets of 5, and didn’t lose my breath. Not sore, not hurt, not tired.

Thanks so much to Pavel and StrongFirst for the Kettlebell Axe program!