You Compare Yourself to Who???

In CrossFit, we are constantly comparing ourselves to others. We have benchmark workouts, we post results on public web sites, and we have PRs. We compare how we do, to how others do, to see how we rank – Beyond the White Board automatically ranks you against others. We wonder, “Am I as good as him? Am I as good as her? Could I have beaten the best?”

I completely agree with what Andy Petranek, of CrossFit LA recently posted:

One of the things that makes us different is the way we constantly compare ourselves to others who do CrossFit. We have leaderboards. We keep score. We post results of workouts up on whiteboards. We do this to create context for training, so that we all have a framework within which our training can exist... goals, expectations of performance, belief of what is possible, etc. Comparisons are good - as long as they are NOT used to make you feel bad about what you are doing... remember, the competition, 99% of the time, is just with yourself!

Wait, what was that??? “…Comparisons are good – as long as they are NOT used to make you feel bad about what you are doing… the competition, 99% of the time, is just with yourself!” Let me expand on that… You should never feel bad about any CrossFit workout, no matter how you compare to others. It is NOT about the comparison to others, it is about how you did, at that given moment in time, for that workout, at that hour of the day, during that temperature, with those people, on that amount of rest, and that amount of fuel, etc. That given moment in time. Did you do your best? Did you leave nothing behind? Did you leave nothing behind?

A while back I blogged about Going After the Big Dog. It was a post about motivation – something that motivates me. There is a definite difference between going after the big dog, and comparing yourself to others via leaderboards. Going after the big dog should motivate you to do better, make you push yourself further than you thought you could go. To challenge you. To motivate you. To help you better compete against yourself.

Every person is different, and every experience is different. It is not appropriate to compare yourself to anyone other than yourself, because you are NOT that other person. You do not have their experiences, their strengths, their weaknesses. We are all put together differently, made up differently, which means that our abilities are different. The only person you should compare yourself to is yourself. And in doing so, you will find that you will sometimes do better, and sometimes do worse than you previously did. It is the nature of CrossFit. It is, what it is, at that exact moment in time, and each moment is going to be different.

So don’t feel bad about what you are doing. Don’t feel bad about your performance. In CrossFit, no matter what your level or ability, your capabilities, at that given moment in time, for that workout, at that hour of the day, during that temperature, with those people, on that amount of rest, and that amount of fuel, you are doing things that most people cannot do. You are doing things that most people cannot do.

Post thoughts to Comments.