When you first start exercising — when you haven’t worked out in years and you’re just trying to build the habit — the competition is you versus you.
The competition is getting out of bed early. It’s packing your gym bag the night before. It’s making your lunch in advance so you’re not scrambling. For a lot of people, the heaviest weight you’ll ever move in the gym is the front door. That’s the competition, and it’s a real one.
But here’s what happens after about a year. You’ve made progress. You feel better. You’re more confident. And it gets easy — dangerously easy — to get a little complacent. Right around that point is exactly when habits quietly start sliding backward.
So what comes next? Not because you’re trying to win anything — but because doing a competition might be exactly the thing you need.
The Fear Is the Point
The first reason to do a competition might sound strange: it’s going to scare you. And that’s a feature, not a bug.
This isn’t generally great life advice in most contexts — doing things purely because they scare you. But in this specific situation, the fear is doing something important. It’s the reason the accomplishment feels like anything at all. If signing up for a 5k, a Hyrox race, or a CrossFit competition didn’t scare you even a little, finishing it wouldn’t feel like much of anything either.
This isn’t about winning. It’s not about finishing first or topping a leaderboard. It’s not even really about doing better than you used to. It’s about overcoming the fear of showing up at all.
Our coaches can get you as prepared as humanly possible — physically ready, technically sound, not going to feel foolish at the event. But the preparation isn’t the point. Actually doing the thing, while your stomach is doing flips, has its own value completely separate from how you perform.
Benchmarking — Not a Test, Just Data
The second reason is benchmarking. And the word matters here — it’s not a test. There’s no way to fail a benchmark.
Every year at Catalyst we run something called the SuperMeet — structured like a powerlifting competition, where you work up to a max lift across several movements. It is not a test. Even if you lift less than last year, that’s not a failure. That’s just data.
And the data tells you something useful. Maybe your priorities shifted this year. Maybe you weigh less than you did. Maybe strength took a back seat to something else, and now you know. Or maybe it tells you that you need to train harder, or need a different program.
We call it a competition specifically to make it feel like something special — not just another Saturday workout. Something you sign up for, prepare for, and do alongside other people. You don’t need to beat anyone. You need to bring your best effort, so the benchmark is honest and there’s no excuse to explain away a poor result.
But maybe most importantly — it’s a chance to celebrate yourself. Exercise isn’t a punishment for what you ate last week. It’s a celebration of what your body can do. Every time you take on something new, you’re giving yourself a kind of physical birthday party — finding limits you didn’t know you had.
Collaborative Competition
The third reason is about who you’re doing this with.
Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, once said that when you ride alone, your wheel is always in front. He was talking about cycling, but the principle applies everywhere. There’s a natural instinct to push a little harder when you’re training next to someone else — not because you’re trying to beat them, but because you don’t want to get dropped.
This isn’t social pressure. Nobody’s keeping score against you the way they did in ninth grade gym class. It’s something more automatic than that — a basic human instinct to stay with the group.
Having a training partner is the single best thing you can do to improve your fitness. The second-best thing is having a training partner who genuinely pushes you to get better. Call it collaborative competition: I want to climb the rope faster, but I also want you to climb yours. My day isn’t a success unless yours is too.
What You Can Actually Do
Here’s a menu of real options, depending on where you’re at.
You can run your first 5k — or your fastest 5k if you’ve already done one. You can learn to swim and complete your first triathlon. You can buy or borrow a bike and ride your first 40k, 70k, or 100k at the ARCH Ride this August — a hospice fundraiser ride, and a great first big-distance goal.
If you want something bigger: try to get a ticket to a Hyrox race. Sign up for the CrossFit Open, or the intramural version we run every spring at Catalyst. If you’re more experienced and have already done a Hyrox or a CrossFit competition, Xenom is a great next-level benchmark to look at.
Or sign up to run your first marathon.
Talk to your coaches about what’s appropriate for you, and what fits your timeline.
Finding the Right Level of Challenge
This matters more than which specific event you pick.
To stay motivated, to love this, and to keep getting fitter, the right level of challenge is not the biggest one you can find. It’s the one that scares you a little — the one that sits just beyond what you can currently do.
If you’ve run a 5k, the next step isn’t a marathon. It’s a 10k. Or that same 5k 10 percent faster. You want something 10 to 15 percent harder than anything you’ve done before — but still reasonable to assume you can complete it.
It should be close. You should have to train seriously for it. But it needs to be possible. Take these challenges one step at a time instead of making giant leaps.
The Bottom Line
After about a year of consistent training, the front door stops being the hardest part — and that’s exactly when complacency creeps in. A competition fixes that. It scares you in a useful way, gives you honest data about where you stand, and connects you to other people pushing toward something together.
Pick something just beyond your current ability. Not the biggest thing you can find. Go after it.
Ready for your next challenge? Talk to your coach at Catalyst.
Coach Chris Cooper is the owner of Catalyst Fitness in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. The Catalyst podcast releases new episodes weekly at catalystgym.com/blog.
🎧 Listen now and make your next workout count.
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