How can competition help you achieve your fitness goals?

How can competition help you achieve your fitness goals?

A bit of healthy competition doesn’t hurt, but it can help you make some big improvements towards your health and fitness goals.  For many people goals alone are not enough to motivate them to success, but the chance to beat someone else is.  The extra motivation or drive to achieve and beat someone else or even yourself is one of the best ways to make sure you keep moving forwards and importantly it can help you stay accountable. 


First of all you need to decide what competition is for you?  Yourself, an event, a friend?  It can be anything from booking into an event or just trying to beat your best time in a 5km run.  


Train with a friend


Those who train together, train more often and train longer and harder.  And that can only equate to better results!  What more motivation do you need than that?  Whether you have a friend with you at the same time you’re training or you’re both following the same program, training with friends is a great motivational tool. 


Even though I am a personal trainer and should be motivated all the time to push myself as hard as I can, I train much harder with a friend.  A little competition is great to keep me motivated and push myself. 


I always want to do more reps than my friend or at the very least try to keep up.  I'm also less likely to skip a training session if I feel like I'm letting a friend down.  As well as training it's also a good bit of social time so you’re killing 2 birds with one stone!


Talking to someone who is following the same plan and journey as you is extremely useful.  You can talk through how each training session works for you and what you struggle with rather than going through it all alone.  And most importantly it's more fun than on your own!


Enter a fitness competition


Choosing a fitness event to compete in is an amazing way of keeping you on track with your goals.  The fact that you don't want to just turn up and get beaten is a big motivator to keep on top of your training.  If the competition is at a set date it gives you something you have to work towards which means you are likely to stay on track with your training regime.



Self motivated competition


Sometimes just beating yourself is satisfying enough.  Set yourself a goal and a date to complete that goal by and then try to beat that date or go past your goal and do better by the time you reach the date.  It's satisfying and rewarding when you perform better than you planned to. 


Motivation for competing against yourself can be hard to maintain, so incentivise it with reward when you compete or beat the goal.  That can be a money goal, a trip, or promise yourself you can buy something you have wanted for ages. 


Or put a wager on what your goal is with a friend.  Nothing better than winning and getting a reward as well.  Incentives will help you work hard to beat the competition and keep you on track. 


You can even involve a charity in this.  For example the loser has to donate  X amount to charity or you make a commitment to donate an amount of money to your given charity every time you miss a training session you had planned to do. 


If the financial accountability is great enough you won't want to miss a session thats for sure!

Arron Collins-Thomas
Founder of TONIQ

 

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