When we hear about the dedication that Olympic athletes and other prodigious achievers had to show to get where they are, it’s hard not to be impressed.
And for a lot of us, that’s not just because of the hard work they had to do, but also how resolute they were from such a young age that that’s what they wanted to do with their lives.
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After all, how many of us can really say we became what we wanted to be when we grew up? And for that matter, how many of us can even say we still want that for ourselves?
Yet not only do some manage to pursue their dreams with a laser focus, but an even rarer breed will blaze a trail for themselves that most of us wouldn’t have even thought of.
Although 21-year-old Ruslana Krutas of Kremenchug, Ukraine didn’t have any plans to join the circus at the age of three, that’s nonetheless when her training started.
As News24 reported , her mother first enrolled her in a gymnastics program at that age because she “did not know how to move normally at all.”
But by the time she turned six, she took a shine to a “circus studio” known as Palace Culture.
There, she started training to be a contortionist under the tutelage of an instructor named Nikolai Ponurko.
And it didn’t take long before she showed a real knack for flexibility.
Fast forward to the age of 12 and Krutas was ready for the big stage and has worked as a circus performer with incredible flexibility ever since.
But she’s only able to keep twisting her body in ways that would agonize the rest of us thanks to a regular discipline of practice.
In her words, “Now I train every day for three to four hours and when I have a break for a week the body really asks to warm up and train.”
And her impressive contortionist skills have already taken her pretty far.
Not only did she dazzle her way into the winning position on Kremenchuk’s Got Talent, but the Guinness World Records committee confirmed that she also has a world record to her name.
And she got it for the most balloons burst using her back with a run of 24.
This was considered quite the upset as her main competitor named Liu Teng had previously set multiple world records when she went head-to-head with Krutas. Nonetheless, Krutas was able to pop nine more balloons than her at a live event in China.
And alongside those impressive accolades, there are some other perks to her level of flexibility as well.
As she put it, “I can crawl into narrow places, or when my hands are full and I need to turn off the light I can turn it off with my foot. It always shocks everyone.”
And from her perspective, all it took to make that possible for her was her years of training.
She added, “Many people think that this is some kind of disease or I have no bones. All this is just training and very mobile joints.”
h/t: News24
