Over the last six decades I have certainly had my fair share of competition with other people but the main competition was always the mirror ... in other words with myself. It certainly wasn't with my pretty grey face. Self-drive is a powerful engine to which to harness what one does in the world and I have worked pretty hard at it in various fields of human endeavor since 1958. But I am starting to see some fraying among the threads I have woven for myself and I am starting to second guess the idea of personal records or personal bests. At least in the gym.
Here are some misc examples of drive that I could conjure with a few seconds of thought. I'm sure I'll come up with a few more tomorrow:
- Competitive target shooting. I was once a small bore short range champ. I ranked 17th in the nation at one point, 2nd in team, which doesn't sound huge but the pool was 10s of thousands so not too shabby. I also once had back to back perfect scores at a meet, something they hadn't seen there. I could here some younger kids whispering and pointing my way. At camp I ran through so many awards that they had to contact an international org to find some more.
- Swimming. I reluctantly starting competing in early jr high but caught the betterment bug soon after. I was super lean, maybe 145 on a heavy day competing against guys that were 6'2 and 210. I generally liked to win against both them and last week's time where the latter was a stronger force. My 50Y free was down to 22.3 at one point. Still probably competitive in a high school today. Got some records on the board, too (gone fairly quickly).
- Pushups. If one pushup is good, more is better, right? I once challenged myself to do 1000 pushups a day for three months. Which I did. In sets like 150 150 140 135 .... 10 10 7 5 etc. until done. I had a lot of free time that summer.
- Bench Press. In my jr year in college, still ~145 soaking wet, I benched 300lb. I have no comparable PRs since then because I don't bench any more for reasons below. Incline DB, sure, but not trad bench. I also do not dead lift btw which seems to be quite popular on Twitter. In this particular case the ratio of 300/145 = 2.1 was better, I believe, than anyone on the FB team then. Might be wrong about that.
- Pull ups. In 2017 I was weak and fat and sedentary...and single. So I went to the gym, lost 35-40 lbs and on my 62nd birthday I repped out 22 full extension (no cheaters) pull ups. Men over 60 are generally lucky if they can do 1 or 2.
- Body weight dips. 20 wasn't enough, nor was 25. I had to make 30. I actually don't remember the max dips since I'd get bored and stop counting sometimes. More on dips later.
There are quite a few other areas where I'd challenge myself -- maybe some other examples might include astrophotography, bodyfat goals, some kinds of art etc. Even this blog was a form of self challenge: to look around every next corner to try to learn something I didn't know. But some of these other fields I'm thinking about are pretty subjective and harder to quantify.
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While this is fun stuff and all, over the last 18 months or so I have started to re-evaluate the utility -- see what I did there? -- of this kind of drive, at least in the physical realm. The wages of personal record seeking are paid in injury and while a 25 year old has the ability and time and regenerative life force to heal, for a 63 year old injury can mean a permanent diminution of lifestyle and comfort. For example, and here not all of this is recent so maybe it doesn't apply, these are some of the wages that were paid out in exchange for me pushing myself:
#3. At the end of the summer of 1000 pushups a day, basically the only thing that happened was: a) I got really good at pushups, and b) I added to my world a permanent elbow tendonitis I still have today. That's it. I didn't really even look any better.
#4. Same problem with bench. I reinjured my elbow benching heavy and so I stopped straight-bench after that. Switching to DB incline in my late 50s, I went hard after reps-to-fail to win back some of the conditioning I'd lost during a long sedentary phase. I also started going to the gym 7 days a week. I seemed to have forgotten about recovery days and forgotten that while muscle can respond to tension quite well even at age, the surrounding "architecture" might need both time to adapt and rest to heal. In addition, a 60yo body does not respond like a 25yo body unless maybe you are on HGH which I am not. The result was that I shredded my shoulder and now have another permanent pain-addition to my body: a partially torn rotator (can't remember which one, I think it was supra-spinatus...). Any attempt to go big in weight is not going to make my shoulder any better. Ego weight PRs? Over, if I really ever even cared that much.
#5. The pull-up thing was fun and was a good brag because I know very few men or boys that can do 22 much less 10 or even five (fwiw, losing 40lb helped). On the other hand, what difference would it make to anyone if I tried for 23. Would there be any qualitative life difference? Does anyone care? Doubt it. No one want's to hear about it and even the 22 thing has been overplayed by me. PRs? Done. 22 was enough.
#6. The dip movement was by far the most destructive one to my shoulder. I kept going after them even when the pain was telling me this was maybe a bad idea. My PT and ortho both: "yeah, stop doing that." PRs are over and my newish dip bar has been idle for months.
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