SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome to Practically Fit, Real Fitness Over 40. I'm Jen Chamberlain.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

And I'm Alex Johnson.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

And today we're going to talk about the benefits and drawbacks of competition when it comes to your personal fitness. Drawbacks?

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Where are the drawbacks in terms of competition and being competitive? I don't see.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Oh, there are some drawbacks, Alex, and I think you have some personal experience with this yourself.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

So Absolutely not. I think competition is very healthy and I think it's the key to fitness success. Podcast over.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

As a non-competitive person, I beg to differ on that. I think that you can be very, very engaged without being competitive and having to beat the person next to you.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Of course, I'm being sarcastic. I don't truly believe that, but I do have a bit of a competitive streak. And Jen, I think I think you undersell your competitiveness as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

It's possible. It's possible, but I only compete with myself. That's the difference. So that's one of the things we're going to talk about today, right? We're going to share a lot of our personal stories, as we both obviously have a lot to say on the subject and a lot of experience with being competitive in our own ways. But we're also going to take a look at what the science says. How can being competitive help you? What about being competitive with yourself like I am? And how can being overly competitive, both with yourself and with others, be harmful to your fitness and well-being? But first, Alex, you found a really interesting survey about fitness and competition. What did that survey tell us?

SPEAKER_01 1:43

Yeah, this survey is fantastic. Uh the funny thing is, um, it's from a website called exercisebike.net. So initially uh my spidey sense was telling me maybe I need to look into the validity of the survey, but it was really well done survey. So kudos to exercise bike.net.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

It does seem like a very generic name, but I'll take your word for it.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Yeah, they sell exercise bikes. It's a very thorough study. I I encourage everyone to go look it up. It's a survey of more than a thousand people. Oh, wow. People who work out two to three times a week, ages 21 to 63. And they wanted to quantify if being competitive might give you an edge in certain fitness activities. So yeah, I had a few takeaways from from the survey. I'm not going to go into the whole thing. It was really extensive. So again, people go look this up. But uh a few high-level takeaways from this survey. 54% of people admitted to competing with themselves, meaning that they try to beat their own personal records. 24% said they compete against others, and then 23% said they don't compete at all. So that was kind of the general landscape of competitiveness in this sample size of a thousand people. Uh 39% admitted to competing against someone they were working out with in the gym, which I thought was interesting. No one, I've never done that. I wouldn't compare myself to the person right next to me when we're both bench pressing and feel, you know, vastly inadequate. That way, of course not. No. Um, generally, people who were competitive with themselves reported more gains in performance across the past year when it comes to endurance strength, enjoyment of exercise, which is an important one, and flexibility. The only exception to this was speed, where people who competed with others reported slightly better improvement, which totally makes sense to me. I mean, if you were trying to improve your speed, perhaps you're doing sprinting or you're an elite athlete or something along those lines. You probably would want to be, you know, running a race. So that made total sense. But I thought I thought that finding about competing with yourself and particularly enjoyment of exercise was awesome. Um, and then women who worked out competitively against others and were competitive with themselves experienced similar enjoyment for working out, while men enjoyed exercise more when they competed against themselves and not others. So I thought that was also an interesting finding. Uh Jim, so I'm curious to get your take on this. Do these findings line up with your personal experience? Have you seen benefits to being competitive with yourself? Because you mentioned that's where your your competitive streak lies.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Yeah, absolutely. And incidentally, I've always felt there was possibly a slight gender bias, as the study indicates. You know, just in terms of how we're socialized, that men, you know, feel this little more of a competition against each other, but then maybe that takes away from the enjoyment a little bit. So I thought that was interesting.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

That is exactly where my brain went with that finding. Like we want to be so competitive and then it's not enjoyable if you lose.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Right. Exactly. Exactly. Or if you kill yourself in the process of trying to beat that guy next to you in the gym, right?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

But for myself, I have, you know, I do admit to being competitive against myself. And I will say it's been beneficial in some areas. You know, it spurred me on to bigger goals. Early in this podcast, I talked about always chasing the BFG, like the big effing goal, you know. So being competitive with myself, I would always think like, what is the next big challenge that I can take on, whether it be, you know, going from a 5K to a 10K to a marathon, or even trying different training methods, you know, to try to get a little bit more performance. So for example, I did well in this half marathon, but could I do better? Could I feel stronger at the end if I did a different type of training? Um, so it's been really helpful there. And also pushing myself out of my comfort level. Um, it's interesting it says not, you know, that people don't compete. People compete more against others for speed, but I remember one time I was really trying to set a new personal record for the 5K. It was on a very chilly, chilly race in Irving, Texas, which is a suburb of where you live, Alex. And um, I was really struggling, but I just kept telling myself, you know, if I push just a tiny bit past my comfort zone, even though it's, you know, kind of getting hard to breathe, etc., that I could get that personal record. And I did, and I was really proud of it. So, and then you have that sense of accomplishment too. So I it's been beneficial in that way for me.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yeah, so in that regard, it added to your enjoyment of the exercise.

SPEAKER_00 6:24

It did, actually, yes.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah, I I think I've had some good experience with competition as well. So, again, thinking you brought up the example of a race trying to beat your PR. Um, that's how I often felt when I was doing running races. I felt like I was competing with myself because I never really felt like I I had a chance uh to win a race or even an age group. I think I might have gotten close one time on an age group in this really small race. And it, you know, I wasn't even expecting that. It was just one of those things where you get there and you think, wow, there aren't that many people in this race. Right. Uh so uh yeah. So for me, when I'm doing a running race, it it's definitely about competition with myself. The the one kind of caveat there is I think you have these mini competitions with interrace. And so, Jen, I'd be curious to know if you're guilty of this.

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Uh I think you have these mini competitions. I think not.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Surely you do this. So you see somebody ahead of you and you think, I'm gonna pass that person, and you reel them in and then you pass them and it feels awesome. Uh you've never done that.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Maybe I've done it occasionally, but it's not really part of it. The other thing is that in running, one of the things I learned early on is you just have it can be so um demoralizing if you're competing against other people because the way a person, a person's age, or you know, if you think they look athletic, has nothing to do with how fast they are. I have been blown away by people who probably have a couple of decades on me. So I mean it's very humbling, quickly.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

That's the flip side of that. And I was gonna mention that. Um actually, um half marathon we did together, it was my first half marathon um in beautiful Waco, Texas. The badass Texas marathon.

SPEAKER_00 8:13

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Uh I remember I I kind of blew out at the end of the race and I had a goal in my mind. And I mean, I think I missed the goal by a few minutes. So it was one of those where you're just disappointed in yourself. But I remember blowing out on the last mile and just getting uh passed by um somebody who was clearly like 20 years older than me. Feeling like, wow, uh that that's like you said, very humbling. Um but yeah, that to me that's where the competition might come in, these little sort of mini competitions within the race. But normally you're competing with yourself to beat PRs. And so from a performance standpoint and an enjoyment standpoint, um, I actually felt like I was in my pink sh peak shape a few summers ago when we were doing 5K's. Um, you and I did a few together, and I was really working on my PR and doing some intensive training where I did a training plan. Like that's when I feel like I was in the probably the best cardio shape of my life. So um to me that was quite successful in that I performed really well, broke my PRs, and I had that sense of enjoyment and satisfaction. Um now when it comes to cycling, that's something where um I mostly compete with myself to beat my own times or raise my speed on certain rides. Um, you know, I'll do something like look at a route that I've ridden before and see if I raise my overall speed, am I higher average speed? Um we talked a little bit previously about Strava, and you can you can look at your PRs on what they call segments. So for me, my favorite segments are hill segments and hill climbs. Now we don't have a lot of really large hills in uh North Texas here like you do in San Francisco. Oh yeah. Uh but there's definitely some hills that I target, and I know if I ride up that hill, I really want to beat my time. But I think I've gotten a lot better about, you know, always trying to go all out on certain segments. I used to do that all the time, and now I've realized some days I don't, I can just feel I'm not gonna be able to beat what I've done before, so I don't I don't try it. Um you can compete with others on these Strava segments, they have leaderboards. Um, you can also do this on virtual cycling. I love virtual cycling, so I do Zwift, and it can be really fun doing Zwift races. Uh, I get a great workout from it, but the one thing about that competition, I'm never competing to win because it's not freaking possible. These people on Zwift, uh, first off, sometimes, you know, there might be some questionable things going on with people's technology or how they've set their weight, or you know, I see a lot of people debating this on Reddit. You know, they post people's times and complain that they're cheating or whatever. Oh my gosh. But regardless of that, put the cheaters aside. Uh, there are people on the Zwift app doing indoor cycling who are just absolute maniacs. And I just know I'm never going to win a Zwift race, and that's fine. So I will compete against a certain place, like I've been doing Tour de Zwift uh the past few weeks, and I'll say my I'll set a goal to myself at the beginning of the race, like um, okay, there's a thousand people in this race. I want to finish, you know, under 500. So that's that's a really fun way for me to compete within a race. Uh and I when I, you know, kind of meet my goal, it feels good. Um and uh it it increases my enjoyment. And again, I do get a really great workout on those races. So um, yeah, it's really again, that's really more about competing with yourself, though.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Uh yes, but I also think Strava is like crack for the competitive, just from everything you've described. I'm just gonna put it out there. I think it totally is. So I refuse to do it because I feel like I might catch the bug if I started doing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

No, there are people on there who like I've seen their rides and they're just going out and hunting what you would call a KOM, which is being the leader on the segment. And I've seen people who post this in their ride titles. So yes, they're oh wow. I think there are people who use that as a sort of high. Right. As you alluded to, it's like a drug for competitive people. Uh so Jen, uh, we've talked kind of about some of our experiences with good competition. Right. So let's talk about what the science says. Can competition be good when it comes to fitness?

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Yeah, let's look at that. So there have been several studies that focused on this. So I'll just summarize, you know, some of the results. There was a 2014 study out of the University of Pennsylvania that put people into four groups composed of either supportive or competitive relationships and individual or team incentives for attending exercise classes. So they're trying to determine, you know, which of these I guess is more motivating to take more classes. So, yeah. So they wanted to see who would attend more classes in these different groups. So the social comparison group had a six-person network for comparison with individual incentives. And this group was the most successful in attending more classes, more so even than a social support group that had the multi-person network but had team-based incentives. So that's interesting. So if you're talking about individual incentives, it would tend to bring out more of that competition against others, whereas team-based, you're all working together towards a unified goal. So they really did find that allowing people to be competitive was the most motivating. So that's one study.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Right. And when you look at these studies, they're really testing like the they kind of divide them all into groups. I saw this across some of these studies, we're looking at, you know, competition, collaboration, support. They would divide them into different groups. Oh, yeah. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Yeah, I have to say one something on that. I will say when you're asking about the mini competitions, on the collaboration side, I have been in a situation where I've been running with maybe the same person, not a total stranger, but I keep seeing them, you know, we're kind of at the same pace in a race. And at the end, have tried to like um encourage them to, you know, like, we're almost there, keep going. And I've had that, you had people encourage me too. So I think that'd be more on the collaborative side instead of trying to, you know, outpace this person. You know, we've been running together. Can we get to the finish together, even though we're total strangers? So I think that's sort of the collaborative motivation that can be helpful too.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Right. It's the concept of a pace group in a race, right? Where folks haven't done races often in longer races, you'll have pacing groups for different uh times. So if you run a run a 10-minute pace, there's a person who has a little sign and they're they're running the 10-minute pace and people run together if you want to do 11 minutes or nine minutes. So yeah, that's the same kind of concept. That's more of a collaborative approach to uh running.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Yeah, pace groups are fantastic. So uh so yeah. So let's look at another study. There's a 2021 study in the journal of the American Medical Association, very legit there, that looked at this question can gamification designed to incorporate behavioral insights and social incentives promote lifestyle modification over a one-year period among adults with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes? So interesting. So they're looking at this idea of gamification. So this study had a similar grouping, including competition and support, and both were shown to have positive effects on physical activity for people with diabetes. So again, gamification of an exercise that promoted competition was motivating. And gamification makes me think of like what you were saying with Swift and with Strava, that you it's almost like you're getting points. You know, it reminds me of like video games in the 80s where you want to get on the leaderboard, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Exactly. I'm gonna write more about this, by the way. Oh, cool. Plug this weekend on practically fit, so stay tuned.

SPEAKER_00 15:59

Nice. And then finally, a 2012 study looked at the impact of competition on physical effort and learning. In an experiment, participants completed a physical effort task in which they were rewarded for winning an overall percentage or for winning a competition they believed was against another player. Interesting. In the physical effort task, participants demonstrated faster reaction times, a previous indicator of increased attention in the competitive environment. Male participants showed faster reaction times and greater sustained effort as a result of a competitive environment, suggesting that males may be more affected by competition in physical effort tasks. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Yeah, so this is really more of an overall psychological study when it comes to competition, but it's directly applicable to the things we talk about, right? Um I just thought that was fascinating that if you're in this situation where you're competing, you react more quickly. It's like being in a game of trivia or something. You can apply this to fitness as well. And then, of course, that last fact about males showing faster reaction times as a result of a competitive environment. I am not surprised by that. Again, these things you cannot apply these things across every person in the male gym. It's true.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

But generally, there's I know some insanely competitive women too, so it definitely crosses over. But it's interesting, the reaction time thing makes me think, and I'm no expert in this, but there must be some sort of like evolutionary biological response to that if you're in competition like it just sharpens you a little bit, sharpens your brain, and you're gonna react more quickly, or you just have that motivation, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Yeah, so you know, um, along the lines of gamification, I wanted to talk about uh data because you know, I don't do some of the apps that you use, Alex, but it has been a real motivating factor for me over time. So when we were preparing for this podcast, I use an app called Athlinks, and I'm able to go back and look at all of my race results over years and years and years. And so that's always something that kind of keeps me going in terms of, you know, for example, weekly miles, you know, setting a goal for that, and can I achieve a certain number of miles running per week or per month? So I think data really plays into the whole idea of competing with yourself. But on the negative side, um, you know, it also kind of can lead to having that external validation instead of internal. So, you know, I can become so obsessed with meeting a goal that I overtrain, which we're gonna talk about a little bit later, or I just don't have the um internal, you know, valid validation of just feeling good and working out to feel good and to um improve my health, that sort of thing, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 18:48

Yeah, and I think this is an interesting intersection with some of the concepts we've discussed previously around intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. So exactly intrinsic motivation, being motivated internally, working out for your health, or so you'll be around for your children when they're older, finding that internal motivation, actually leading to greater success with your fitness plan over time. So, yeah, that's why I think all this is a balance. The competition can be beneficial, but sometimes there can be downsides. So let's talk about the downsides. Yeah, let's do. I found a Washington Post article uh titled Yes, You Can Be Too Competitive. Here's Why and How to Stop by John Briley. And there was a quote in there from Ginny Crocker. She's the Ohio eminent scholar in social psychology at Ohio State University, and this quote really resonated with me. So I'm gonna quote directly from the article. Quote, Competitiveness isn't inherently good or bad. It can be motivating, encourage people to push themselves, expand their capacities and capabilities, and perform at a high level. Where it's bad is where we compete in ways that are bad for other people. So then Crocker goes on to talk about, for example, a desire to beat others in a race, like we've been talking about early in the podcast, which he says, quote, is fine as long as you're not elbowing someone into a ditch to accomplish your goal. If winning the competition becomes the ultimate goal, you may be willing to sacrifice things along the way that could be very bad. I thought this was a really powerful concept when you think about competition in the realm of fitness. Competition can be beneficial for you if it helps you have a healthier heart, get stronger, or perform at a higher level. But if you're treating people poorly along the way or making everything about competition instead of the enjoyment of fitness, which is really that enjoyment of fitness is part of that intrinsic motivation, doing something that you enjoy and can be detrimental. So I was I was talking about this episode with my wife the other night, and I said, okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna bring up an example uh from a recent bike ride that we had, so I got permission for this story. But uh we uh we, you know, we've talked a lot about how when we're doing activities together, like cycling, for example, which is one we do all the time together, riding outdoors. Sometimes she feels like I'll put my fitness goals first. So, for example, riding too fast, trying to hit a certain speed, like I was talking about earlier, or trying to do a certain number of miles. And this was something that happened a few weeks ago. Um, so this is a really good example. We were um doing a ride, and um, she wasn't, you know, feeling so great. We hadn't, we you know, our riding's been down since I broke my leg, so we're trying to build up strength um and and do you know longer rides again. And it was it was really warm, unseasonably warm day. So we had kind of gotten all the way out on our ride, and we needed to come back. And we were we were trying to figure out like what's the best route, and she was advocating one way, and I was advocating another way. Uh, and so in that case, it's possible. It's possible that the route I was choosing might have prioritized making sure I got to this number I had in my head on the mileage. So uh whereas she was wanting to cut the distance a little bit. Um, two, there was like some safety concerns in there because we've been really cognizant of the safety lately. So, you know, that was another thing I was considering, right? Which was part of the conversation. I was saying, well, I'm also looking at, you know, I don't want to ride on that road, but I think it would be better to ride on this road. But we looked it up when we got home, and definitely the route I was espousing did have more miles on it. Gotten to that number in my head. So um, this is something that I think is really important. Like if you're if you have a fitness friend or a partner and you're doing activities with them uh and you let competition get in the way, even if you're competing with yourself, which is what I'm often doing. It's not about competing with my wife when we're out on these rides. Like, but if I'm thinking I want to go a certain speed or I have to hit a certain number of miles, it can be it can be detrimental to your enjoyment of the exercise. So I just thought this was a really powerful statement from uh Ginny Crocker and something that you could really extend in numerous ways and apply in terms of fitness and how it could lead you down a bad path. I'm curious, Jin, to get your take on this.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

Yeah, you know, you made me think about something that happened to me actually just last week. So I'm uncoupled right now, so I, you know, don't have anybody else impacted my by my uh competition with myself. But I was in the gym last week um doing kettlebell swings, which, you know, you wrote a post about how great they are, and I I love them too. But I had in my mind this certain number I wanted to get to. And I could tell in the last set, like my forum was not very good. And I knew that I should that you really should stop when your forum starts degrading because you could potentially hurt yourself. And sure enough, I was like, my neck and some of the places where you shouldn't be sore were really sore, and I was like, that was just so stupid. But I just had to finish that number. Exactly, and there was nobody even in the gym to compete against. It was just all in my head.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

So yeah, we and I've done the same thing where you're like, I need to get 30 sets of this exercise and the interval thing, and I'm yeah, that's and that leads us perfectly into the the next kind of downside of this, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Oh, yes, overtraining. Yeah, this can definitely lead to overtraining. And this has been probably of the different um side effects, if you will, of competition. This has been the one that's affected me the most, is in terms of um, you know, trying to compete with myself and really pushing it too far just because I have some arbitrary goal in my mind, whether it's, you know, running a few extra miles or an extra training day, etc. So we talked about this a few months ago in our podcast about rest. And uh just to define it, overtraining is when you train too much and essentially make yourself unwell in, you know, a variety of different ways. That could be, like I was saying, you know, that could be injuring your muscles, but it could also be like um sort of impacting your immune system, lowering your immune response so that you're more prone to get sick. That's actually something that can happen from overtraining or just feeling tired in general. So we found an article from a journal called Sports Medicine uh titled Athletes Fit but Not Healthy. That is quite an intriguing title. This article states fitness and health can be defined separately. Fitness describes the ability to perform a given exercise task, and health explains a person's state of well-being. Where physiological systems work in harmony, too many athletes are fit but unhealthy. Wow. That's uh really powerful. So the article goes on to say this phenomena has two causes. Uh too many processed refined carbs in athletes' diets, which kind of goes to our uh podcast about dieting recently.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

Yeah, I mean, not the subject of the podcast, but that's what it said.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

Oh, wow, yeah. That's so that's actually something I'm working on right now, is trying to cut back on processed refined carbs. Um, I just as a side tangent, I think sometimes when you do endurance sports, you can think, oh, well, I need the carbs, right? But you can definitely still overdo it. And that could lead you to being fit but unhealthy. The other thing that this article pointed to was too much high-intensity training. So if you're overly competitive, particularly with yourself, you could find yourself overtraining. And that's like I said, that's really one of my biggest um pitfalls is overtraining. Just to cite another example that I've mentioned before, during the depths of the pandemic, I found found myself um, you know, honestly struggling with some psychological issues in terms of being alone all the time because I worked from home and I was missing the community that I used to have, going out with friends and stuff. So I just worked out all the time, just you know, for hours a day and really wore myself down. And, you know, so counterproductive because at the time at that time I would be trying to keep my immune system up to fight any potential exposure to the virus, and and yet I was really wearing down my immune system by just overtraining excessively, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Yeah, it's that's that's definitely something that you can you can fall into. And I've I've been there as well. For me, you know, we've talked a bit about this in previous podcasts, you know, this stuff where you get competitive, like my box jumping, which was ridiculous, and trying to jump higher every time. Uh also for me, I I think one where I really have to be careful is the strength training. Um, and I think that's something more deep in terms of psychology in my mind, because like we talked about on the dieting podcast last time. Um, you know, I'm just a naturally very skinny person. So growing up, you know, it I got made fun of for being skinny. So I think once I figured out strength training in college, I'm like, wow, I can really there's something there where you're wanting to push more, right? And get stronger and look a little bit more muscular, you know, because you were made fun of. So uh there was a point in my life where I was doing a lot of like barbell training, you know, heavy barbell training. I would do it alone in my garage, which is probably kind of similar to your scenario there during the pandemic. It was really an outlet for me uh at one point in my life, and I was single at the time. So I would just uh in fact, there was there was a period where I would lift barbells every day. I got it, I was trying to do squats every day, daily squatting. Wow. Um I love deadlifting. Uh and yeah, it it, you know, I hurt my back because I just kept trying to put, you know, a little bit more weight on each week, right? And you know, maybe I'm compromising my form like you did with your kettlebell the other day. So for me, strength training is one where I still have to be careful. Uh my my wife was giving me a hard time recently because I keep buying new dumbbells and she's like, oh, I'm gonna stop. And I'm like, no, I'm gonna stop with the 55s. That's it. So I have so far not ordered another pair of dumbbells after I got the 55.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Oh, we'll see. We'll see how long that lasts.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

But uh no, actually, I think the older I get, I, you know, might I'm a little bit more realistic about this and realize like I don't need to be lifting super heavy and I'm just not there anymore. So it's accepting the aging, right?

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Exactly. No, I'm gonna add to that too, because I'm actually kind of getting more into strength training. I had a blog post about um, you know, lifting weights and how great it is for women, particularly. But I'm learning that with strength training, you really have to be careful not to push it too far to where you're not using good form. You know, I think you can get away with this a little bit in running. I'm not saying it's the best thing to do, but if you want to go a little bit further, you can slow down and still kind of, you know, sustain. But you really have to be careful with pushing it on weight training because you could really injure yourself. So that's something I'm trying to that I'm learning as I sort of venture into this new area of fitness. But I'm curious, Alex, after all that we've learned and talked about, are there any things you're going to actually change as a result of our research on competition?

SPEAKER_01 30:11

No, I mean, I I'll just be honest, no, because I actually think uh no, because you know, we were joking around at the beginning of the episode. Like I've I feel like I've been changing that within myself here in the past year or or two. Um, so um, and it goes back to that accountability buddy, like having having my wife, and she's really good about helping me think through, you know, varying my exercise intensity levels and things of that nature. Um, so it's not it's not to say that I haven't needed that. I just think I've been doing it, which has been awesome. So that this was such an interesting topic to look into for me personally, just having kind of been going through that over the past couple of years. So yeah, no, nothing I would change immediately, but I think for me it's just a great reminder of why you, you know, there are benefits to this. It's okay to be competitive, but you know, number one, you want to make sure you're you're treating yourself well. And number one, number two, you want to make sure you're treating others well. Uh and don't let the competition lead to an injury or, you know, pissing somebody off who's close to you.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

Right. Exactly. Yeah, I think for me, I really am gonna work on focusing a little bit more on intrinsic motivation, you know, for exercise, how it makes me feel, versus just hitting a specific arbitrary number or goal in my competition with myself. And then also, like I said, being a little bit uh more careful with strength training, that you know, when my form starts to degrade, I just go ahead and call it a day, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the strength training, again, I want to underscore that and come back to something you said. Um, if you're running, for example, you can just stop. But if you're if you're doing a bench press with a barbell and you have uh, you know, whatever weight you've got on there, uh, you really if you drop that you're and there's no one there with you, uh, you're kind of in a pickle. So and I've done that before.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Oh, you have? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:08

This is another example of why competition is bad with weight training. Bench pressing by yourself.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

Yeah, I also do kettlebells at home sometimes, and I always have visions of like getting really tired and when like flying through my window, you know.

SPEAKER_01 32:21

Yeah, or the I was doing it in front of the TV the other day, and I thought, oh, if I got tired, this is this is bad.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Oh man. Well, that wraps up our episode on competition. Uh, really interesting to look at the actual science behind competition. So next week we will be talking about gut health. It may not be the sexiest topic, but it's definitely something that can impact your fitness and training and that we've struggled with. So we're gonna look at the science behind gut health and especially for endurance sports, but other sports as well. There's increasingly research that shows they're interconnected. So um tune in to hear all about your gut.

SPEAKER_01 32:59

Yeah, and you know, people are talking more openly about their gut. You know, I have some stories to share around that. So um, that was a great episode, Jen. I really appreciate the discussion on this topic. Of course, if you'd like to share your story, please send me an email, alex at practically. Or head out to practically. And there, if you're not signed up, if you're just listening to the podcast on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher or one of these other networks, you can sign up for our newsletter and receive our content weekly in your inbox. And I will say it's pretty good content, so uh you should do that. Um until next time, though. Remember, fitness is for everybody.