Comparison: A One Way Street

I see this daily. While some athletes have a neutral head on their shoulders, many are tormented with the stark difference between their abilities and the abilities of their classmates. Comparison creeps in. While I’d like to recommend that comparison is useless and that any of it should be forbidden, I cannot. After all, comparison can if it’s helpful, right?

We hear stories of how comparison can be the root of remarkable efforts and inspire, so we can’t throw the baby out with the bath water. This, though, ought to be a one-way street. Comparison is helpful when it’s helpful, and it’s not when it’s not. Navigating when to compare yourself to others, then, is easy. If comparing yourself to an athlete above your ability makes you better, as in it inspires you or drives you to work harder, then continue on. For many athletes, however, comparison is a distraction is best, and destructive at worst.

Consider that no action has ever been taken place anywhere or anytime than right here, right now in the moment. While it’s understandable to let your mind drift off towards a futuristic version of youself that looks remarkably similar to the classmate you have your eye on. Imagining yourself with a hundred more pounds on all your lifts and many, many muscle ups (though you don’t have unassisted pull ups, yet) has no advantages. After all, you’ll need to take one step forward before you can end up a mile down the road.

This is your race. You can’t hop on anyone’s back, either. Get involved with what you can do right here, right now to add five pounds to your lift. Chip away at using less assistance and drill into how to get one step further than you are right now.

In the baseball world, we have an popular figure of speech for times when one’s energy, words, or eyes were focused outside themselves and I’ll encourage you to heed it: “Stay with you.”

 

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach

 

PS – If it bothers you that Johnny CrossFit and Jane CrossFit are stronger than you in class, you’ll be shocked to realize it’s a big world out there and there are teenage girls putting hundreds of pounds over their heads right now. Best bet is to “stay with you.”