Sunday Story...Competing

How does competing fit in the path to health and longevity? After all, getting out on the edge, pushing your heart, lungs, and muscles past the point of comfort into suffering seems antithetical to health and fitness. In many ways it is. Yet competing is part of our human condition. For millennia we have competed for resources, land, and more. It is in our blood.

Yet going all out is in that territory where, on the old maps, “dragons be!” We don’t want to fall off the world's edge, yet like the explorers of old, we don’t want to just skirt the edges of the known world, we want to go beyond. And although we may risk mutiny, we don’t want to wreck our ship in pursuit of something that isn’t going to serve our long-term goals.

At this point in our journey, we recognize that going all out, sinking the ships may not be the best strategy. Leave that one for the 20 somethings. If they fall off the edge, the climb back isn’t so bad. For those of us longer in the tooth, the climb back may be impossible.

So, after all these years living in and using this body, I need to be able to regulate my effort. Take a breather, give yourself 5-10 seconds and restart. Have the discipline to maintain your rest time and get right back to work. In a sentence: work smarter, not harder. You can compete, you can go hard and harder, but you must be self-aware enough to know when and how to back off from the edge.

Like last week, I will leave you with this nugget:

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

John Mariotti

www.sunday-stories.blogspot.com

www.crossfitodyssey.com

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