Your Score. Part 1.

Your Score. Part 1.

Unpopular opinion: Your Score. Doesn’t Matter.

Counterargument: ‘But you write it on the board, it must be important.’

I’d like to make an argument that it’s not about the score. It’s about the shared suffering, the mutual “I showed up today.” But my beef isn’t with competition or your scores, it’s with you (not you as a person, I love you). It’s with how you’re looking at your score, it’s how it defines a good vs a bad training day.

Your score might be what you record, it might be one way we track progress over time, but a successful training day is not only determined by your score. Your score is secondary to your effort. Your effort, day in and day out, will be what enables you, over time, to improve.

Your score doesn’t take into account the child you had 6 weeks ago or your week vacation you took with your family. It doesn’t take into account the injury you're recuperating from. The process isn’t linear. It’ll have ups and downs, days to push, days and weeks to allow yourself to get back into it.

It matters zero whether you win or lose against your friends; whether you put up the best score or the worst.

Hypothetically:

1. You put up the best score in your class, turns out it’s the best score in the gym. You put about 75% of your best into it.

2. You put up the worst score in your class, turns out it’s one of the worst scores in the gym. You gave it everything you had for that day. 

Which do you choose? Which one leads to you becoming better in the long term?

These are extreme examples and there are a lot of options in between and other factors to consider.

If you come in and give your best effort for that day, and own that, the improvements, the results, will take care of themselves. If you don’t try because you're not “good at this stuff,” or you try only when it’s your wheelhouse movements or time domain or whatever you’ve decided your thing is… or you try just enough to beat your friend, you’re leaving a bunch on the table. If you decide to go for the gold because you want to beat your friends, but you’re supposed to be at 70% recuperating from a shoulder injury, you’re putting yourself in a vulnerable position.

I’m not discouraging competition. Not in the slightest. I love it, I think it’s great. But why are you here? Really? What do you want out of this? The primary competition here, for your long term development and success in training, should be you vs you. Corny? Maybe. Your score doesn’t tell the whole story.

Use the environment, use the people for a push. Push yourself to a place where you wouldn’t go training alone. Use the coaches to create a plan. They’re here for you. Reassurance that it’s perfect to stay at 80% today or change up the movements to give your back a break or to encourage you to try the more challenging movement or skill. Give your best. You’re doing all of this for you, so show up for yourself.

Chase improving your effort, consistently. Leave here happy with the effort, for it is one variable you can control.

Next Month: Your Score. Part 2. Why it matters.