“But I should be better..”

..than what?

..than who?

If you are anything like me, you put a lot of time, effort, and emotion into your training program, whether it be Crossfit, running, a Beachbody program, or just training for aesthetics. You log you workouts. You put in the work. You make changes outside of the gym to complement the work that you do inside the gym.

And you get better.

You finally nailed that lift that you have been chasing. Finally got that pull-up or managed an unassisted pistol. Finally RXed that benchmark WOD, and finally strung those muscle-ups together.

You are better than you were yesterday, better than you were a month ago, better than you were three months ago, and do you even recognize who you were a year ago?

Yet alongside those personal victories and gains, you sometimes start to chase someone else’s progress. Not the old you. Not the weaker, less skilled you. But you chase the goals of another person who you think that you should be as good as. You look up to her, aspire to lift what she is lifting, do the movements as she is, have the endurance she does. You put in extra hours in the gym to make yourself one step closer to her and you are getting stronger every single day; making gains, making progress.

But the truth is, so is she. And you may be forever chasing someone who is on a parallel path to yours with lines that may never intersect.

There is nothing wrong with competition, and heck, sports like Crossfit thrive on the competitive atmosphere. It is often what pushes someone to do that one extra rep because the next guy did, or to add 5 more pounds to the bar because that’s what she did. Competition is an excellent and significant part of training, but can be a bit discouraging and all too humbling when you utter the words, “”But I should be better..” when the rest of that sentence is a person other than you.

We are all guilty of this.

I am historically very guilty of this. And have written about it far too many times in the past like this post on  not celebrating my PR since someone else one-upped me, and this post on complaining about how someone else did compared to me  (though even self-comparison can get you in trouble, too..).

But what I have realized since I switched up my programming and started doing The Outlaw Way, and distancing myself from the class-WODs, is that I am so much more in competition with myself.

I lift alongside one other girl who is doing the program part-time. Other than that, my bro-time is spent with three guys, all far more stronger and elite than me. My weights will never compare to theirs, nor should they. I cannot share a bar or realistically expect to beat their time in WODs.

But doing this program has allowed me to take a step back. and focus on me. Focus on my progress, my progressions. Focus on looking back to where I was a month and where I am at today.

As much as I think it is a great to have the whiteboard to see where you rank and to help motivate you in other ways, for me, doing this programming more on my own has eliminated so much stress. I am not striving for an artificial expectation, nor getting discouraged for arbitrarily failing.

I am just over two weeks into the program and I have already PRed two lifts. I have done three WODs with a 53# kettlebell (one with farmer carries with one in each hand, the others with KB swings)  that I would have surely used the 32# before. I did a WOD yesterday with a 20# wall ball (put into perspective, I have around a 12:00 Karen that was all tears); I never ever would have imagined scaling up on a movement that is a major goat.

Every day I look at the programmed WOD and think the yesterday-me would not even want to attempt it, but the new me is going do it and push through it whatever it takes. I am only in competition with myself and I can only strive to be the best version of me.