Everything Is A Competition (Part II)

In case you missed it, I have already written a blog describing how Everything Is A Competition.

Instead of boring you to death with a wordy article about how competition makes your training better, I am simply going to show you.

The Scenario:
Winter 2011 Training Session: Chaos Overhead Squats.

The First Competitor:
Arthur Kuyan - probably the most competitive person to ever walk the earth.

If you tell him you can bench 380, he wants to bench 385.

If you tell him you can eat 13 cheeseburgers at McDonald's, he wants to eat 14.

The video below shows him performing a Chaos Overhead Squat with a 45lb plate on one side.

He wanted to do more, but I didn't feel he was ready.

He almost got shattered by his previous set with 35lbs on one side, so I told him to hold off on a big jump in weight.

(This is a key point in the story, so don't forget it).




The Second Competitor:
ME - within minutes of Kuyan finishing his set shown above, I perform the same movement with 50lbs on one side of the bar. (Unfortunately we did not capture this on video.)

Needless to say, Kuyan wants to rip my head off.

The Competition Begins:
To make it clear he is stronger than me, Kuyan performs a Chaos Overhead Squat with 52.5 lbs on one side during our next training session.






The Third Competitor:
Mike Morano - The all time Power Point champion.


Despite being the Power Point Champion three years in a row, he still feels he gets "No Respect".

Tired of hearing about how strong Kuyan is, Morano performs the squat with 60lbs on one side of the bar "just because he can."




The Competition Continues:
By total coincidence, these two animals end up in the gym outside one of our regularly scheduled training sessions.

They decide to play Mahoney.O and send me the film while I am away for business.

The videos below tell it all.











The Wrap-Up:


If these guys were training alone, there is no chance either one of them ever would have performed a Chaos Overhead Squat with 65lbs on one side of the bar.

When I say "alone" in this context, I don't even mean training without a trainer.

I mean training outside of a training group.

Even if I was training these guys 1 on 1, there is no way they would have been able to make such huge gains in such a short time.

The power of competition is amazing.

If you are training alone, you are missing out.