Some form of competition is needed to achieve really big things. Great athletes get better when competing with better athletes. Businesses get better (or go out of business) by competing with better businesses. We are driven forward by competition. Coach Sonnon of the Circular Strength Training® system likes to point out the etymology of the word. It derives from the latin con and petire which in essence is to seek together. By entering into competition we seek excellence through our interaction with others. We push each other forward.

When faced with discomfort (physical, mental, emotional or spiritual) we tend to back off, unless we are driven by something bigger. Whe I can’t imagine doing another rep, or running another 30 seconds, I can focus in on that goal of competing at my peak and that allows me to push through.  Consider the Will Smith secret to success.  If you get on the treadmill with him, you’ll get off first or he’ll die trying to stay on longer.  That’s the power of competition.

Competition has become taboo in modern society. We teach kids that as long as they are having fun, nothing else matters. Everyone gets to be right. Everyone has the right to win. All the time! Now, I am not saying that we should not encourage our kids to have fun. If you aren’t having fun, it’s harder to learn. But we should also be teaching them that there is a value in seeking to improve every time out. They should want to win, or at least do better than they did the last time. And they should feel bad when they don’t win! And want to figure out how to improve. Those are valuable lessons that our politically correct dogma is trying to whitewash. I agree that competition is not about winning and losing. But it is about using winning and losing as a tool to grow and improve!!!

If you want to inch ever closer to your potential, you need to constantly slip past your comfort zone. That is a very hard thing to do on your own. The best motivation is competition. But you don’t need systematized competition. Sometimes something as simple as having a training partner who pushes you is, in itself, a form of competition. But something needs to be driving you forward and making you examine yourself when you don’t make the grade.  If you are in the fitness dip, and need some extra motivation, start looking for a challenge to break through the barrier and achieve excellence.

I know you want to get into better shape. I know you’re tired of being embarrassed to wear summer clothes. But you can’t go from where you are to looking like a fitness model or bodybuilder instantly. Gradual change is the only viable choice, no matter how frustrated you are.

This is an especially frustrating idea for guys to deal with. It’s our nature to dive head first into something new, damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead and all that. We sit in front of a computer all week at the office, then foolishly expect to be able to beat our teenager at basketball on the weekend. We have a hard time accepting that we’re not high school athletes anymore.

That said, we should look at this realistically. You don’t look the way you want, or you wouldn’t be reading this. The reason you don’t have the body you want is because of the way you live your life. If you want to make major changes in your physique, you’re going to have to make some pretty significant changes in your life. It’s going to take a lot to go from where you are now to looking like you could be on the cover of a fitness magazine. But there are two problems with making the transition all at once.

The first is killing yourself. If you are really out of shape, you could kill yourself trying to change too fast. That’s why you should see a doctor before starting a major workout program. If you try to go from your sedentary lifestyle & unhealthy eating habits to major workouts and eating like a fitness model in one leap, your body is going to freak  out. Too much change too fast is too hard on your body. Your body needs a chance to adjust to new exercise and eating patterns. You’ll get ill or hurt yourself.

If you switch all at
once, your head is going to freak out too. You’ll find it hard to do the full exercise program, and your stomach will demand its daily extra-cheese pizza. You won’t see any results right away, and you’ll give up in disgust.

Finally, if you make all the changes at once and succeed in avoiding a physical or mental breakdown, you’ll be missing something else. You won’t know what works for you. Are the dietary changes working, or was your new diet useless with great results from the workouts? Would you get better results from making more dietary changes or working out more? There’s no way to know.

None of this would be a big deal if you could jump right into a program that let you get fit without having to adjust anything. But that’s rare. Most of the time, you need to make adjustments as you go along to keep the progress coming. You can’t tell which things to adjust if you went crazy and changed your entire lifestyle at one.

Gradual change is a better way. By changing one thing at a time, for example skipping the milkshake at lunch, you can start moving in the right direction without too much stress. Your body can easily adapt to small changes. You won’t freak out and quit because it is too hard. Instead, you will have your first small success under your belt and be ready to move on to greater fitness.

So there’s the secret to success. Change gradually for the best results. You won’t get there as fast as you would if you could dive in head first and change everything at once, but if that worked, you would already have the body you want, right?