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Fitness

A Look at Our Love-Hate Relationship With Competition

Are you inspired or deflated by competition? Is it valuable or harmful? This week's we explore those questions in sport, business, and psyche.

Becca Borawski

Written by Becca Borawski Last updated on August 3, 2014

Competition is everywhere, whether we like it or not. Between athletes, between businesses, and between the voices in our heads. Some believe there is in incomparable value in competition, and even in losing. Others believe competition squashes people and their ambitions.

You have competition every day because you set such high standards for yourself that you have to go out every day and live up to that. – Michael Jordan

Are you inspired or deflated by competition? Is it valuable or harmful? This week’s articles explore those questions in different scenarios.

Editor’s Picks

The Life-or-Death Reason Kids Need to Learn to Fail

Should kids really get rewarded for participation alone? Or should value and incentive be placed on the pursuit of victory? Is losing something kids should experience for their own betterment? Coach Eric Stevens explores all these questions.

The Emotions of the CrossFit Games (Video)

The higher the stakes, the higher the emotions involved. Winning and losing comes with a whole array of emotional states and experiences – positive and negative. Here, you can experience for a few minutes what it’s like for the CrossFit Games elite athletes.

How the New CrossFit Certification Levels Will Impact You

Competition doesn’t just happen between athletes, but also among businesses. What happens when CrossFit gyms compete with each other on a financial level? Do the new certification levels play into this? CrossFit gym owner and coach Teddy Kim offers his thoughts.

Should a Weightlifter Watch Other Lifters?

Should a competitive weightlifter watch his opponents when they’re on the platform? Should he watch his teammates? Should he let his teammates or competitors watch him? What are the pitfalls and the benefits? Olympic weightlifting expert Dresdin Archibald weighs in.

Build Competitive Teamwork, Not Just Competition

Yes, CrossFit is competitive. But there are ways to make sure that competition is productive, not destructive, and to use it to build teams instead of divides. CrossFit coach and psychologist Craig Marker offers his thoughts and ideas for workouts.

winning, losing, competition, school sports, competition in schools, dodo birds

CrossFit Games 2014: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Three-time CrossFit Games veteran Patrick McCarty knows a thing or two about competition. Here he reports back from his 2014 experience on what went well, the best part of the competition experience, and how water should not be a scarce commodity.

Why Loving Your Body Is Not Enough

You don’t necessarily have to be in a competition scenario to set off the competitive voices in your head. And those voices can be critical, judging voices. Coach Summer Innanen discusses how those voices can mislead us as to what our real goals should be, and how we can instead learn to love who we are and shut down the internal judges.

Photo 1 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 2 courtesy of CrossFit Empirical and DSLR Lessons.

Becca Borawski

About Becca Borawski

Becca found her way to a career in health and fitness through Martial Arts and CrossFit. Originally a music editor for film and television, Becca started studying Martial Arts in 2000. Though she started with traditional Martial Arts it was not long before she discovered Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and her path was forever altered. She began training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) and Muay Thai and started working with professional MMA fighters, building websites, working on fight promotions, and producing videos.

As a competitor in BJJ herself, Becca wanted to get stronger and fitter. In 2006 she discovered CrossFit and became a student at CrossFit Los Angeles. In only a couple of years she became CrossFit Level III Certified, left her career in the film industry, and dedicated herself full time to coaching. She has since been certified through CrossFit in Olympic Lifting, Powerlifting, Nutrition, Endurance and Kids coaching. She also held an NSCA-CSCS from 2006-2008 and is a certified IndoRow instructor. In addition to coaching adults, she founded the CrossFit LA Kids program in 2010 and taught children aged 5-17.

Becca regularly takes on new sports, which have included indoor rowing, fencing, and most recently, cycling, as she believes it makes her both a better athlete and a better coach. In order to reach more people with her coaching, Becca also created ModernAthena.com – a website dedicated to women in pursuit of physical fitness and self-improvement.

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