Comparison – friend or foe?
Competition is an important part of any sport, and looking at the performance of other athletes can help to motivate and drive performance. Taking it too far and over-focusing on what others are doing can lead to stress and worry about one’s own training. In this blog, Coach Denise looks at the good and bad parts of a comparison and how to stay grounded with your own plans and training.
For most sports people the element of competition is a critical part of what they do. Trying to beat others, improving on previous races or winning their age category are all perfectly legitimate goals. A large part of this is also knowing what the performance needs to be to achieve that goal. Looking at what other athletes are achieving can be very motivating, and help to establish performance goals for races and training sessions.
It is inevitable that many athletes, including triathletes, are going to spend a lot of their time comparing their performance to others. While this can be helpful in some situations it can also be a trap for the unwary.
Looking at the performance of other athletes can help to set benchmarks and provide an understanding of where the triathlete might be able to improve and so set realistic goals.
If there is a goal of qualifying for a specific event from a race performance then understanding previous performances from athletes in the same age category can help to determine where the athlete is in terms of the likelihood of achieving that goal. It can also highlight areas for the triathlete to work on, in all three sports as well as the fourth discipline of transition.
The trap in question, however, is when an athlete starts to compare training performances with others, especially outside of their own category. As a 58-year-old female, it makes no sense to compare my training times, hours, and efforts with a 25-year-old male athlete for example.
Training is a very individual thing. All athletes are starting from different place, they have different lives and different goals. Someone with a high-intensity job who also has a young family has very different priorities from a single person who has more flexibility in their work.
Even comparing your own performance to that in the past can have its issues. Looking for progress over time as you strengthen and improve both physically and technically is an obvious way to measure progress. Most of the time this makes a lot of sense to highlight improvements. There will be times, though, when training has been impacted by something, be it injury, illness, workloads, family issues or other life stresses. In this case, looking at current performance vs previous performances can be negative, highlighting a loss in performance and building up frustration. In this case, a coach can help an athlete take a step back and put the current performance in context as well as plan a path forwards to regain previous abilities.
With so many different tracking devices and apps it is possible for athletes to share every aspect, and every second, of their training. However, what often happens is that the good sessions are shared widely with lots of positive energy, and the tough ones, or those not completed, are not communicated at all. This can create an unrealistic picture of the training that others are doing.
Professional athletes in particular are embracing the use of social media. There are a lot of benefits to following some of the big names in sports and seeing how they are doing. It shows support for the athlete and gives an insight into how they are training. But again, most professional athletes do not share the bad days, with Elish McColgan offering a notable exception after a particularly bad day.
The fact that this is a remarkable event in itself shows just how far the reality of training is from the picture we all like to paint.
It is important to remember that training plans are all different, the race length, the starting point of the athlete and the date of the race all have an impact on what training should be done when. Factor in all the different elements of people’s lives and it is clear that what suits one person will not suit another.
This is where a coach can prove invaluable. A training plan that suits the individual needs will be developed to maximise the outcome from the training hours available. When the inevitable comparisons come: my running friend just did a 15-mile run yesterday and I’m way off her pace; my cycling buddy did a 50-mile ride at 18 mph and he’s way faster than me, for example, the coach can be there to reground the athlete in their own performance and progress towards their own goals. These comparisons may be with athletes who are doing different distance events or who only have three days a week to train in so they cram it all into a weekend.
Looking at what others do can be helpful but keep it in perspective. Remember all the great sessions you happily shared on social media and the poor ones you quietly took off Strava. That person you are admiring and wanting to emulate may well be looking at your Instagram or Facebook posts and wishing they were doing as well as you are.
Denise has been coaching triathletes since 2019 as a coach at her local triathlon club in West Lothian. Between 2019 and 2022, Denise was the Head coach in the club, working with a team of coaches to support and develop triathletes with a wide range of capabilities, completing her BTF Triathlon Level 2 coaching qualification in 2021.
Denise joined Tri Training Harder as a coach in 2021, building on the qualifications through the experience and knowledge passed on by the coaching team.
In 2019 Denise set up and continues to run her own Jog Scotland running group, a mixed ability group of runners who meet weekly. This delivers on her passion for helping people to do much more than they think they can.
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