Are you training or competing? Can you do both?
Of course you can as long as the larger goal takes priority.
When I was an active competitor in CrossFit my teammates and I constantly pushed each other. Because the sport of CrossFit developed from doing regular workouts as fast as possible it is pretty easy to get sucked into competing against your friends on a daily basis. However, competing in every training session can seriously hamper your overall training and its benefits.
Looking back at my team’s training a few aspects stick out. Yes, we did push each other every day. But we also understood each individual session was meant to lead towards something bigger. Even though we wanted to be the first done with the workout we understood we would win some and lose some throughout the week. The point of the training was to get better, not just win a workout each day.
If you run shuttle sprints in practice then you have seen or participated in this same dichotomy. Often these will be framed as a competition to have you and your teammates push the pace against each other. This becomes an issue, however, when you lose sight of working specifically on your cuts and change of direction. The competition easily overshadows these minute aspects you should be working to improve during training. If you can avoid always getting pulled into the ego competition you will dial in your skills more efficiently and effectively. Then when competition is the true goal you won’t have any issue winning every time.
In your training use the athletes around you to push you to do your best. Just remember your goal is to improve yourself, not beat others in daily workouts. You will have movements or workouts where you are weak. Put effort into improving these and never cut corners just to feel like you are ahead.
