Concentrate on quality physical training and proper technique and then increase the quantity of your training... Leave your ego out of your workout program.

Eliminating your ego from your workout program and concentrating on quality physical training over the quantity of training will bring about the greatest amount of fitness performance improvement.

Whether you believe it or not... you are competing every time you train.

No, you are not competing with the guy or girl next to you at the gym... you are competing with yourself!

Remember... The point of physical training is performance improvement.

Who's performance?

YOUR performance!

The object of your training sessions are to improve the performance of physical skills compared to past performances... Being able to do more, better than you did before.

Who cares if you can do more or less than so-and-so?

The reason I bring this up is that more often than not people get into competition with those around them... and their training suffers.

Usually, they will focus on a limited amount of exercises with the intention of "maximizing" their performance and "beating" those around them... Instead of focusing on quality physical training.

But "maximizing" your performance in one particular physical skill is the fastest way to move away from over-all fitness excellence.

"Optimizing" performance... showing competence, ability and quality in a variety of physical skills, is the path to fitness excellence.

This is the path of quality physical training.

By competing with those around them, people inevitably sacrifice quality physical training for quantity training.

In an effort to out-perform those around them, there is an excessive emphasis on load and fatigue seeking... leading to poor technique and ineffective, potentially dangerous form.

Quality physical training is much more important than beating the person next to you... So leave your ego out of your workout program.

Your fitness excellence will not just be measured by how much you can do... but how much you can do properly compared to past performances.

Do not increase the quantity of an activity, either by increasing weight, increasing repetitions or decreasing rest periods... until you can perform the activity with proper form and quality of motion.

From a coaching standpoint, I measure the effectiveness of training by measuring the amount of improvement in the skill seen over time.

Look at it this way...

There are two people training a resistance activity...the first one lifts more but has not seen any improvements in a long time, and the second one lifts less but shows noticeable improvement from one month to the next.

Who is performing a more productive physical training program?

The person that shows improvement... even though the total output is less!

I know it is hard not to judge ourselves by those around us.

But remember this... when you focus on quality physical training you will make improvements that will ultimately allow you to outperform others with proper form and technique.

Quality physical training produces good habits that will lead to solid, sustainable performance improvement... where focusing on quantity of load or fatigue is a short-cut to injury.

And how well can you perform in sport, work and life when you are injured.

Make strength, conditioning and fitness improvements through quality physical training... and you will enjoy long lasting performance improvements that can actually exceed your expectations.