Competition of the Frenemie kind

Last night at the gym I had my first ever encounter with a gym frenemie. What is ironic is that literally 2 days ago I read an article in the new November/December issue of Fitness magazine (pg. 68) about this exact concept. The article was called, Fighting Shape. (some people have workout buddies. I have gym frenemies- and that’s how I like it.) I was intrigued so I keep reading the article. Here’s the link to the article http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/workout/motivation/get-started/exercise-motivation/

In a nut shell, the author expresses that she likes to mentally compete against other fit girls in the gym to push herself. I thought it was an interesting concept. “Pick the treadmill next to the woman who has my ideal body, subtly peer over her shoulder to check out her pace, set my machine’s speed one notch faster and run like hell. When sweat drips into my eyes and my thighs start to feel like fiery Jell-O, I look sideways, and if that jackrabbit of a woman is still running, you can bet I will be too. When she increases her incline to 10, I follow suit, silently swearing, I will chase your skinny ass all the way up this imaginary mountain!” This pretty much sums up the concept of the article.

At the time when I read the article I was like, I can see how that would be motivating, but didn’t really see it until LAST NIGHT. Let me explain what happened. It was Halloween and all was quiet at the gym. Not shockingly it was pretty empty. The night before I had actually discussed with Amanda, my friend, the class instructor about the reality of no one showing up for class on Thursday night. She said if that happened we’d figure something out. BTW, last night she told me if no one showed she planned on just working out with me. Love my girls at the gym! Anyway, turns out 4 people showed up for classes. Me, my mom and two others. One of the “others” was a girl that I have seen before, I believe maybe last week take a class. She is a naturally tall thin woman. We do not have similar body shapes by any means. She is probably 5’8” tall and just much more slender in build. She was probably in her late 20’s early 30’s and she quickly started talking to me. She was nice and pleasant but for some reason I was getting this interesting vibe from her.

The vibe of competitiveness. Not from me, I was NOT competitive. I had nothing to be competitive about. I am more than comfortable and happy with my performance and limits at this point in the game. I am not new to the fitness class rodeo and am pretty comfortable in whatever they throw at me. Since it was only 4 of us Amanda informed us for the first ½ hour cardio class we were going to be doing something a little different and told us to grab kettle balls and head up to the treadmills. We were going to be doing high intensity interval sprints/exercises. As soon as we walked to the kettle ball stand this girl looks at me and says, how heavy are you getting? I was like a 20 pound one. I don’t really know what we are doing with them, but 20 is good.

We walk up to the treadmills and she informs me that she is just back to the gym, only been going for two weeks now and wants to get back in shape. I should tell you, that while this girl is not my body type at all, she is naturally tall and slender; this does not mean she was fit. She probably could lose 10-15 pounds. She looked fine. But she didn’t necessarily look “fit”. I don’t care either way; just we were not competing in my mind so it didn’t matter. I could tell that she wanted to be next to me on the treadmills so I was like, fine, no worries. If there is one thing I am absolutely confident in my ability in, it’s the treadmill.

So Amanda informs us we are doing a 40 second all out sprint, and then get off and 20 kettle ball swings, and then 40 second sprint, etc. Sometimes we would be doing burpies instead of kettle balls, but she’d let us know. And that this would keep occurring for 20 minutes time. That this would completely elevate our heart rates. So we get on the treadmills, the girl on my right. Amanda says put your speed at something challenging for you. And then she said, Emily, you put your incline at 6. Apparently she believes I need to push myself, so I did. Just to test the waters my first interval I set my speed at 7 only. I wanted to push myself but wasn’t sure with the 6 incline how I’d do. The girl next to me started at a 6 but kept peeking her eyes over at my treadmill. I could tell she was competitive.

Next round, having successfully completed the 7, I upped my speed to a 7.5, and she increased her speed to a 7 and started panting and huffing and puffing. A couple rounds later, I decided to push myself all out and went to an 8.5. And this is when it happened. The girl, out loud, looked over at me and my 8.5 on the treadmill and said, and I quote. “Oh, wow, I’m done. I’m done competing with you.” I was taken aback. I was not competing with her. I really was not. I was running my speed and distance to challenge myself. I didn’t realize we were competing because I generally don’t compete. I know what I can do and I only try and improve upon myself. I actually could not believe she said that. I ignored it and went on my way. The last two sprints I did at a 9 miles per hour and it felt great.

When we were all done and getting of the treadmill in a nice way she was like, I kept upping my speed to you but when you got to 8.5 I was like I’m done. I can’t do this anymore. I was like, okay. And then it dawned on me I had experienced the gym frenemie I had just read about. Except the funny thing was, I wasn’t the girl in the scenario I thought I’d be. I was the girl she was trying to outrun. Interesting. There was a certain element of a compliment in there. I was for whatever reason the girl she was trying to be like and that felt good but weird at the same time, because I am not that type of girl. I don’t ever want to make someone else feel bad about themselves or think they have to compete. I am so far from perfect in every sense of the word. But maybe, without realizing it, she was using me for her motivation. I guess that’s cool to. As I said, I’ve been at this for a while now, and there is simply no place I feel more at home at than on a treadmill so it’s easy for me to go above and beyond in that arena. Even Amanda admitted that she could not possibly keep up with me on the treadmill, and that is the truth. Amanda, the trainer, is not a runner and she knows that I am.

I felt very humbled by this experience last night. And slightly weird and uncomfortable at the same time. I am just me, no more, no less. I have spent 10 years of my life obsessing, struggling, fighting, working my ass off and to have it all come down to a few moments where someone felt the need to “compete” against me was so weird. We are not competitors. We won’t ever be. We could be friends. I could encourage you, and share my story and knowledge with you, but I don’t want to compete. It was just a surreal experience to have someone say out loud that they were competing against you. Now, we may all do it from time to time silently, but that’s the point, its silent. I guess whatever it takes to motivate you.

Later, in the second class, Iron Power, which is my favorite, a whole hour of strength training, she kept saying things like, “I will get stronger, I’m going to be able to lift as much or be as good as you. I will get there. I will do better than you.” I kept shaking my head silently like, WTF… am I that intimidating? I’m a nice girl. I kept smiling at her and trying to be friendly. I don’t want someone competing with me because it just makes me feel awkward and then there is that little voice is my head that is like, Hell no. That is not going to happen. So I guess my inner competitive athlete comes out and is like, if you want to make it a competition than I am going to win. But odds are I won’t even see her that much so it’s not really going to be an issue.

There are people in class who do more than me, and people who do less. That is life. We are not competing. We are all there, just trying to be the best versions of ourselves. Do better than you did last week. I don’t care what the person next to me is doing. Sure, I am more than happy to help and share my life, but I’m not judging you and I’m certainly not trying to do more than you. You will never win at that game. Period.

So with all the said, I had a killer amazing workout last night and I felt so good. I finally got a back photo taken of me and then went to put it next to a photo of me from Maui this last June. I was not exactly thrilled with the photo from June and was like, ugh, does my backside really look like that? But then today, I placed the photos side by side and realized that holy shit, there is definite progress happening in 4 months. It’s not exactly a fair comparison because the before photo I was not flexing my arms or back and obviously in the photo from yesterday I am. But it’s still pretty cool progress. The thing I most notice is the “line” down my back is much longer now. And I have real muscles and my ass is definitely less saggy. This is 4 months. I have every intention of taking another photo in another 4 months to compare it to. It might look about the same, it might look better, who knows, but honestly after only 4 months this is pretty impressive to me. I will take these results. These are the things we have to do in order to keep moving forward and keep reminding ourselves that even though some things aren’t changing, in the greater scheme of things, we are constantly changing. I certainly didn’t notice these changes every single day as they were occurring, but clearly in 4 months we have made great progress. Who knew? For the record, I love my back. It feels very strong. And also, for the record, I am pretty much close to the same weight in both pictures. I am literally in that magical 135-142 pound range in both of them. So we are talking at the most a 7 pound difference. Clearly the biggest difference is the muscle mass. Muscle is amazing. And I am in love. So happy Friday my friends. Have an amazing frenemie-less weekend :)