Be Your Own Competition

Be your own competition!

Take a look in the mirror. That is your competition. Having said this......why have I entered a competition?As a competitive individual I have always enjoyed competing in sport. Whether that be during sports day, cross country, playing football or any sport for that matter.As we get older, there are less opportunities to compete. There was this void missing for me. I miss training to compete. Even when I was playing football for my local football team as a child, I enjoyed the thought of competing against another team at the weekend and doing my best in my training to perform my best at the games. It’s true... I wasn’t exactly playing in front of a sell out crowd, but I gain satisfaction from seeing hard work pay off.

For this reason, I have entered a CrossFit competition (my first one!). To be completely honest, the fear of the unknown unsettles me. I have thoughts such as “what if I come last?” “What if a workout/Wod comes up that I fail or can’t execute the weight selected?” What if I injure myself right near the competition? But there was a time when as a child learning to walk, I’d have fallen over. Learning to ride a bike, I fell into a hedge of nettles , learning to drive a car, I stalled it.

.See, it is easy to stay in your comfort zone ,but you need to challenge your boundaries. My training has altered in line with the competition. I have started learning new Olympic lifts such as split jerks, cleans, push jerks, overhead lunges, overhead squats. I have also forced myself to work on weaknesses such as pull ups & exercises I avoid such as thrusters. I am also incorporating more WODS into my training (these are displayed on my Instagram @hannahburgon_pt)I know that if I put in as much effort as possible leading up to the competition, that I shouldn’t be too self critical on the day. I just don’t want to lose. I want to win.

Now this may be a high expectation and an unrealistic goal (as I dunno my competition), but with this mindset I’ll be motivated to train at 100%. I am loving training at the moment.You don’t need a competition to be competitive though.

Compete with yourself. Set yourself goals. They may be as small as “to go to the gym 3 times a week instead of 2 times”. Have high expectations of yourself. Be competitive with yourself. Aside from training. Day to day, are we not all competing? I’m talking about life in general. Should we not all thrive to be the best version of ourselves? Whatever that means to us. What does that mean to you? I urge you to have a think and set things in place to achieve this. STARTING NOW!