Remember superlatives in your high school yearbook? Best Smile, Best Dressed, Most Athletic, Most Likely to Succeed… you know the ones. High school nostalgia aside, (you’re welcome), consider the common superlatives you hear or use in the gym. Fastest time? Heaviest weight? Most work accomplished in X amount of time?
Taken a step further, consider the scope of what makes each superlative true. Typically, fastest/heaviest/most exists only within context… of a particular workout, on a particular day, within a particular group, etc.
Let’s expand our point of reference with a couple more examples. Have you ever heard or said any of the following?
After a workout: “That’s the closest I’ve ever come to dying.”
After 30 minutes in the sauna: “That’s the hottest it’s ever been.”
When you’re fasting: “I’ve never been hungrier in my life.”
When you’re eager for an event/program: “I’ve never been more excited!”
After a particular memorable experience, for anything: “That’s the best ___ ever.”
Now, while I don’t mean to suggest that any of these statements are irrelevant, or overly dramatic (alright fine maybe a little; PS: I’m guilty too), I do encourage you to reality-test their benefit by exploring the following:
- The frequency upon which you say/hear superlatives in your day-to-day life
- The weight upon which you assign value to their validity, in and outside of specific context
So you had the fastest conditioning time in class? Awesome! By all means, celebrate.
Got a new program and want to sing its praises to the world? SEND IT. You got my support.
Recently had a BEST EVER meal? Amazing. Please tell me where… I wanna go!
Look, I wish you a lifetime of as many bests as possible. But also, I hope you appreciate all the non-best experiences, too. And I hope you keep superlatives in check for what they are: merely units of rhetorical reference, assigned to fixed moments in time.
Best/worst/whatever, don’t let a competition with descriptive words ever stop you from trying. Keep experiencing. Keep livin’.
Kimmy Moss
@kimmy.moss
1/17/20 WOD
Complete 4 rounds for quality:
:45 Hollow Rocks
:45 HS Hold
10 Powell Raises (ea)
Then, complete 3 rounds for time of:
500m Row
42 Kettlebell Swings (54/44)
6 Strict Pull Up