Are You Training or Competing In Your Workouts?

I was listening to a podcast recently about mindset in workouts, and it really got me to thinking. How many times have I gone into a workout (especially a group workout), with an intended purpose of training a particular skill or building distance, and turned it into a competition?

I don’t know about you, but if I am working out with someone else, in the back of my mind, I know exactly where they are at all times, and whether I do it intentionally or not, I am trying to beat them in that workout.

As an athlete, we are all inherently competitive. It just comes with the territory.

But how often does that competitive mindset actually hinder our progress?

We all know that we need to push ourselves, because that is how we get fitter. But as an athlete, we tend to forget that some workouts have a different purpose than just to push us to our limit.

For example, I remember when I was swimming competitively, during certain parts of the season, we did a ton of technique work. We would do drills to focus on certain aspects of our technique, and then try to incorporate that into our stroke to make ourselves more efficient, and then at the end of the practice, we would usually do a harder set. During that, the intention was to continue focusing on our new stroke changes with higher intensity, but often we would just turn it into a competition for the set. We would be either trying to beat our own times, or beat the person next to us.

Instead of embracing the mental challenge of correcting our stroke, we would feed our own ego by competing.

As a PT now, I see so many of my patients do this in their workouts.

People have a hard time switching off of competition mode and switching to a focus on skill acquisition in order to protect their bodies, and by doing so, they end up slowing their progress with rehabbing an injury. Or even worse, they end up causing a new injury.

So the next time you workout, I ask you to take a few minutes beforehand to ask yourself: “What is my goal for this workout? Is it to compete? Or is it to get better at something?”

If your goal is to compete, then by all means, have at it.

If your goal is to improve, then turn your blinders on. Forget about the clock. Forget about what the person next to you is doing. Focus on what you showed up for.

There will be plenty of chances to compete.

It will be the focused training sessions, where you are working on your weaknesses, that will be the change-maker in the long run.