Competition. What if you looked at it another way?

One thing many people love about CrossFit is the competition.  For the people who were competitive athletes in high school or college, Crossfit is a great way to reconnect with that competitive environment.
What about for the rest of us?

• Those of us who were really never athletes? 
• Those of us perhaps even completely inactive up until starting Crossfit? 
• Those of us who rarely if ever get to do a work out at prescribed weights or standards?  
• For those of us who will never have the fasts times or highest scores or heaviest weights written on the board? 
• For those of us who worry "Am I going to be the last one again?"

In pondering this over the past week, I want offer a different perspective on competition.  For me, I know I some times get caught up with feeling like doing the workout as prescribed as the end goal or that if I don't put up times close to the top athletes at our gym that some how I am failing.  This focus this can leave me feeling frustrated and depressed when there is really no need for that.

I have been practicing looking at it another way.  If I complete against myself what does that look like? Because I track all my workouts, its easy for me to compare performance on a particular lift or workout.  If I have done a workout more than once, was I able to do it in less time this time? or with more weight? For any given lift, did I do it better, more efficiently this week?  Even beyond the actual metrics: Did I show up more times this week? Did I relax more and manage my self talk more during the work out rather than berating myself or complaining endlessly? Did I check the website, groan as it is stuff I hate or things that scare me and show up anyway? :)

Take some time and make sure your standards of success aren't so high that you are in a state of constant not feeling good enough. There are so many ways to look at competition, growth and success. This isn't about lowering the standards so that every one gets a ribbon kind of thing but rather shifting perspective to way that you can appreciate how you are stacking up against the you that was yesterday, last week, last year.

Ask yourself "How can I be better today?"

"Competition is not about winning or losing, its about putting yourself out there, doing things that might scare you a bit, and coming out the other side a better version of yourself"  - Ben Bergeron CFNE

Glad to Be Here

I was taking my typical long Saturday morning walk in a nearby park when I saw a young woman putting on her head phones and take off for a run. A few years ago I would have been me - same park, slipping on my head phones and running. In observing her, I breathed a sigh of relief that it was no longer me.

I spent so many years toiling away. Looking to be fitter, healthier and feeling so frustrated.
I convinced myself that I just needed to push more, work harder even though I was working out more consistently and harder than most people I knew. I ran a half dozen half marathons and two full marathons. Of course accomplishing the goal of a those distances is a reward in and of its self.  However, part of the reason I was logging all of those miles was I thought that is what I needed to be doing to be thinner, fitter.  I created some great friendships, conquered some goals but as each training season ended I was typically injured (stress fractured femur, constantly painful knees) and always flabbier.  Even my weight lifting didn't bring me the results I wanted for various reasons. I was following advice from mainstream fitness sources (magazines, tv) and honestly they just miss the mark. The really good trainers in the industry know this and don't train their clients that way. Not ever having been a high school or collegiate athlete or having exposure to a trainer who knows what the hell they are doing, I didn't know any differently.

I am not knocking things like Shape or Women's health. Every program out there will bring results from some one - this goes for both fitness and diet plans.  Some one will get in better shape from following a workout plan from a monthly women's magazine, from eating vegetarian, from marathoning, from following the South Beach plan (or insert any of the 10,000 different diet books out there) but none of it worked well enough for me and it left me feeling lazy and stupid.

And then I found Crossfit.  It set every thing that I thought I knew about fitness on its head.  You don't need hours of cardio that make you miserable to be leaner? You can do something other than 3x10 for every body part and still build muscle?  You can do a workout that is only 4 minutes long and that is all you need for that day? Tell me more. :)

There are so many lessons I have learned from Crossfit but the point of this blog post is this one:
Question what you are doing. Have you been doing the same thing for years in hopes of being fitter but not really seeing any changes? Seek out experts and test their advice. Run experiments on yourself. Are you happy with how you look, feel and perform? If you are, then super! If you are not, then change something....not a BUNCH of somethings... but something so that you can observe and learn from.  I spent years thinking I just needed to be working harder but what I needed to do was to work smarter.  Find out what works for you. Demand it for yourself.


While I wish I would have known better about training earlier in my life, I am so glad to be where I am.