On a recent flight I starting thinking about work and the last few days and one thing really stuck out in my head. I mean, what else is there to do while staring at the folded up tray table on the seat in front of me. Most people would try to sleep since it is 6:30 in the morning but once these things started popping up in my head, I had to get writing while the going was good.

What makes a competitor, exactly? I thought I’d share my take on interpreting this grey area. In a recent class I proposed the question, “why are you here?” “Why do you come to CrossFit?” Not surprisingly there was the wide array of answers you would expect to hear but there was one response that rang true to me especially and got me thinking about this topic even more.

“Because its competitive. I compete against myself every single day,” he said.

For one, this is exactly why I started CrossFit over 3 and a half years ago. But also, deep down isn’t that why we are all here? We want to be better; we want to be better than our former self was a year ago, a month ago, an hour ago.We are constantly trying to compete with that person and we want to come out on top every single time.When we don’t, it affects us, our mood, and how we deal with things until the next time we go head-to-head. Just like the time trail mode in Mario Kart for Nintendo 64 when you race your ghost from the previous fastest lap and it sucks when he keeps beating you! We’ve all had that feeling.

That answer also makes me wonder why there is this “intimidation” factor around the community (or just in the double-wide at ACF) when so-called “competitors” are working out.What makes this small group of people any different than the rest of the population? If we are all competitors then I say, nothing. Sure we may have been doing this longer and have changed the priority from improving ourselves, to trying to improve ourselves more and faster than others can themselves. But if you ask any one of us, we all would have started somewhere, and that “somewhere” was trying to improve ourselves first, and get healthy and fit. So if you take away anything at all from this rambling post, probably because my ears have not popped since we took off and this is distracting me from the resulting headache, remember this:

1:We are all competitors. Be better than you were an hour ago.There should be no reason for intimidation, EVER!
2: Compete against yourself first and get healthy (diet, weight loss, consistent exercise, mobility), then start thinking about comparing yourself to other people.