Competition

I am competitive.  I know surprise surprise.  I hate to lose at anything and I want to win at everything.  Most of the time I think competition is great, I love the competition in tennis and basketball.  I love competing with myself in powerlifting, and I like competing with people who don’t even know I’m competing with them.  Is there a point when competition takes away from the activity?  I have seen both sides of competition and there have been times that the ugly side has shown its face.  

Competition has its place, in the right place.  Most workout days, my goal is to be stronger, stronger than I was yesterday, stronger than I thought I could be, stronger than I prepared for.  It’s a competitiveness that I carry with me most days.  It pushes me hard and keeps me motivated.  Sometimes, I will watch a video of someone doing something crazy and I will go into the studio and try it.  I pretend I don’t care if I am successful or not, but I care…a lot.  I don’t train to be mediocre, I don’t train to be average.  I train to be great.  And most of the time, that is my drive, my motivation.  

With all the good that comes from my experience with competition, there is also some not so good parts…of course there are.  Competition can lead me to obsessiveness, at times there is a fine line between those two.  When winning becomes the focus, which is a huge part of competition, unless it’s not anymore.  There are times when competing with some just isn’t fun anymore.  The person, never me of course, only cares about winning and doesn’t seem to enjoy the game.  The person will bring down the people around them just to come out ahead.  I was working with some girls this summer and there were two girls that wanted to have little competitions, and I thought it would be a fun way to get a workout in.  But they only wanted to be better than the other girls, they didn’t care how they did, they didn’t care if they had to change the rules, they wanted to win.  Now we ended up not competing, I couldn’t have sore winners making others feel bad only to boost the winners higher up.  

And it isn’t just with the girls that this happens to, truth be told, we were doing an obstacle course one day and I was joining along with the group.  Everyone was having a good time and working hard.  At one point I had the opportunity to pass someone, and being the competitive person that I am, I wanted to take that opportunity.  As I was gearing up to pass I stopped myself, my competitiveness is going to take away this persons experience.  They are having fun, working out and enjoying it, why do I need to pass her and possibly make her feel bad.  Instead I kept in the line up and relaxed a little.  

There is also a point in a competition where I am just scared, I am scared of letting myself down, I am scared of looking like I am not prepared, I am scared of failing.  I love to hate this feeling.  It pushes me in the quietness of my studio, in the middle of a set I don’t want to do.  But up in front of people, man it is a hard one to face.  And the only way to get through it is to experience it.  If I wasn’t competitive and I didn’t care, I probably wouldn’t be so nervous.  If I was just out there to have fun, I could focus more on the fun.  

Competition is a driving factor for me, it helps motivate me to work harder and try things that I never thought were possible.  Once I know something is possible, my views of myself and my own abilities increases.  I train with focus and drive but also I want to better than I was yesterday.  Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of being a competitive person has helped me use that drive as a motivator.