Name: VALENTIN PETKOV

We, people, are so constructed that we change all our life, whether conscientiously or not. Sometimes we let life change us and sometimes we take life in our hands, and we change it. I do believe that there are no unattainable things, there is solely poor motivation. When you know what you want and you put all your being in toiling hard to achieve it, there surely will always be results.
Prior to starting to train more seriously, I looked like 99% of the people who do not go in for sports at all. Naturally, I had desire to improve my physique and my self-confidence. I thought that if I did press-ups, abdominal presses and so on, there would be a result, but nothing happened.
When I started to go in for fitness, there was almost no information about that but there were hung up posters of people going in for fitness and bodybuilding in each fitness center. To me they looked absolutely unreal and remote. Then I thought that the quality, the separation and the volume of their musculature was completely illusory and could not be attained in any manner whatsoever.
The turning point for my entering the fitness center to train was when I saw an acquaintance of mine who also trained and had attained real progress and I, making chaotic movements had achieved no difference at all. And I remember that we agreed with two friends of mine to go in for fitness together. At the last moment, however, getting to the place we had agreed to meet in, it turned out that I was the only one to keep our appointment. I hesitated a lot but I decided that I had gone there anyway and it was appropriate for me to enter the fitness hall. I was worried. It seemed that everyone there knew what they were doing except for me. You remember the feeling you have each time when you start to do something new. It is always frightening to be a beginner. Fear of failure very often makes people give up even before they have tried to do it. It turned out, however, that the people training there were exceptionally friendly. Each of them helped me with advice, directions, whether appropriate or not, but this was my first contact with fitness.
The other turning point was when I left for South Africa. I was dumbstruck with the scale I saw in the fitness centers there. What I had seen only in magazines and films was suddenly at arm’s length from me. I started my education in the sphere there. I touched the magic and the core of the functioning of our body, the enormous potential and capacity of movement it has.
Approximately at that time I had accepted a conviction, however, that the body may not develop its full potential without anything being added to it. Quite frequently convictions stop us from getting what we really may attain. Sometime this is a certain kind of education or morality imposed to us in the course of the years, a model of behavior, which we have perceived from the people we are surrounded by. Naturally, we may also acquire useful and good convictions but they frequently are such pulling us one step back. I thought that if I trained only naturally, I would not achieve such good results, personally for myself. During this period of hesitations I had suspended my trainings. You know that sometimes even if we are with full physical strength, our psyche may prevent us from getting what we want. This suspension turned out to be quite useful as I started to study the human body even more profoundly, to watch each its response and what it was provoked by. I began training again and applying all that to myself, quite naturally. Then I got convinced how much our body is capable of attaining.
In the course of the years I changed not only my physique but also my convictions, my quality of life as a whole, the way I viewed the world. Sports taught me a lot, gave me a lot. It taught me discipline, perseverance, responsibility, predominantly for myself and for my own body.
One of the most important lessons I learnt dealing with this is not everything is at all cost. We should not neglect our health and what some external impacts cause to us. We have only one body which we live all our life in. The way it functions defines each sphere we try to enter. If aimed at attaining our objective, we have to suppress our psyche and torture ourselves, it is not worth it. Our health, both physical and mental, is the first most significant thing aimed at our succeeding and attaining our goals. A lot of people neglect this and people frequently fall ill with today’s “modern” diseases – eating disorders, depressions. Once you get in them and start getting into trouble, you will find yourself within a vicious circle, which is very difficult to get out of. It is frightening to know how many people suffer from such conditions, and how little they are spoken about.
I am of the opinion that we should permanently work, develop ourselves and the support of our relatives and close friends is sometimes also of special significance for that. Not everyone is ready to understand people who decide to implement competitive activities. Frequently one may not get into the position of the other persons. He does not realize the privations they suffer, the difficult trainings which they are subjected to and the neglect of the social life sometimes. He does not understand the changes in the mood directly prior to competition. I was lucky and everyone around me supported by decision.
Hеre, I would like to add something more. There are occasions in life where one objectively encounters obstacles of great proportion, there are medical health conditions, luck of time or recourses etc. when I was about the age of 13 I was training touristic orientation ( a lot of cross country running) progressively I started do develop knee injuries. after a training camp I got in such a dread full condition, that my parents literally had to carry me to hospital. Medical ban on all sport activity exempt for swimming was automatically issued with the therapy. Over the years I had to work on my legs with extreme care and attention. One mistake would be to stop sport all together, another to train like a maniac pretending nothing happened until I finish as a cripple.
The next big obstacle I encountered in my military service At the age of 28 in the army I had an injury of my spine so bad I had to be discharged as physically unfit. My 2 fractured spinal discs, together with my fragile knees made me the least man on earth to envision further competitive career related to any sport in which heavy weights are used. Only very patient , methodological and extremely health conscious work in the years ahead made all my successes that followed possible.