USAWA

by Thom Van Vleck

I started a weightlifting club at the University I work at a few years back. It has been very successful even if it has evolved into more of a “crossfit” type group.  But there are some serious weightlifters in there, too.

One of the things that happened as we had more women than men sign up. I began to investigate and here’s what I found.

The guys got pretty hung up on being the strongest.  If they couldn’t be the strongest in the group they pretty quickly quit.  Of course, there can only be one guy that’s the strongest so you pretty quickly end up with a pretty small group.  It ended up often being a competition instead of a workout.

The women weren’t worried about being the strongest.  They just wanted to be stronger.  They focused on pulling each other along.  They didn’t care who was the strongest.  They all wanted each other to be stronger.  They were competitive, but not in a negative way like the guys.

When I was in the military we had a lot of competition.  Most of it was healthy, some of it was not.  When it was healthy it went like this:  As a fighting force you are as strong as your weakest member.  So you encouraged the guy next to you to be successful because at some point your life might depend on it. You elevated yourself by making them better and in turn natural competitiveness would lead you to raise your game.  When it was unhealthy it was more like this:  You elevated yourself by bringing down those around you.  You didn’t get better, they got worse.

So ask yourself.  Do I want to be the strongest?  Or do I want to be stronger!  I personally think that when you choose to be stronger it’s more likely you’ll end up the strongest.