Bondi-based fitness guru Brandon Hasick tells us why exercising with friends is the best thing for motivation.
No one likes being the only one who can’t do something, whilst everyone is making it look easy. And that is exactly why you should be training in a group setting or at least have people to bounce your results off.
It is very true that we should only compare ourselves to ourselves. But the reality is, we work harder and achieve more when we fear being inferior as well as thrive at the chance to be superior.
Two things will happen once you’ve compared your results with others.
You will feel great about how well you’ve done and you’ll be motivated to chase the same feeling of accomplishment over and over.
You may have an acute bout of self shame, however, usually follow it up with an extra boost of motivation to ensure that you stay away from that feeling of not being adequate.
No matter which style of behavior you feature, there is something to be said for comparing certain aspects of your life with other people. The world has evolved based on constant fight for superiority, and so too will your strength gains and fitness levels.
Here’s what to do:
- Grab a friend or friends and list your current fitness goals. Compare your goals with their goals. This will be beneficial for a few reasons. Firstly, you will solidify your wants and ensure accountability. It will also allow you to see whether you are setting the bar high enough or too low.
- Create accountability between you and your friends. Come up with a way that you can keep each other accountable to reaching your goals. Whether that’s a daily text to see which workout each person completed, noting the results they got, or if you have a weekly catch up where you can compare notes and scores. This is a quick and effective feedback tool for how you are stacking up against the rest, rather than waiting for the end of a certain time period.
- Join a group training studio like Bodybybrando, that promotes results and performance tracking so you get constant feedback and accountability on your progress. Whether you compare these results with others or yourself, you will always be moving forward to building a better body based on strength and fitness.
Brandon Hasick is a Sports Scientist, movement coach and owner of BodyByBrando, a group fitness studio in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. Brando holds a passion for helping ordinary people achieve extraordinary results with their bodies with his ultimate goal to help as many people understand how they can build a better body that functions at optimal capacity day in and day out.
