Blog

posted on March 9, 2020

Every day I am surrounded by strong, beautiful and confident women. I train/compete with and against some of these women, they inspire me and challenge me in my daily life. Feelings of inferiority and jealousy do not have room within the four walls of my heart. I am not in competition with these women, I stand on the same side and loudly cheer for their accomplishments.

Since I can remember society has engrained within me that I should worry about the woman standing next to me, is she prettier than me? Is she stronger? Is she better? And all through elementary, middle and high school, even college I constantly compared myself to any woman, even if the only time I ever saw her was through the screen on my phone. Insecurity deeply rooted itself and fear tip toed through the halls of my life while they quietly hid, waiting for the right time to come out and play.

The moment I started treating my body better, feeding it and nourishing it with endorphins I saw a shift. Although I had been involved in sports all my life, no one taught me how to love my body because that was an inside job. You can have people in your life that give you the tools to succeed but you will not find success if you don’t put in the work yourself – I was 22 when I realized this.

The majority of my 20s have looked a lot like this; college, CrossFit, graduation, CrossFit, post-grad jobs, CrossFit. If you’ve met me or if you follow me on Instagram, you know that fitness truthfully is numero uno in my life. My entire day revolves around when I can get into the gym to train and each of those days are structured accordingly, to me its a structure that I invite into my life because this is what makes me happy at the end of the day. The only thing I can control is how much work I put in, day in and day out. This mentality applies to not only my own training but my job, my relationships and more importantly the relationship I have with myself. The outcomes are completely out of my hands but I can never be disappointed in my own performance if I can honestly say, I did everything I could have.

When I started investing in myself I stopped feeling like I was in constant competition with other women. I stopped worrying if my best friend was prettier than me or if my training partner was stronger than me. I became less insecure and more secure, I became less introverted and more of a leader and I stopped comparing myself to others within the gym and started asking the hard question of, what can I do to get better?

I spend nearly 2-3+ hours a day training competitively with women who are stronger, faster and better than I am at the sport of CrossFit. Again, those feelings of inferiority or jealousy have no room to spread because within the walls of a gym you will find only support and encouragement. Yes they might be better than I am but there are also women who are better than them as well, we are all on the same path and regardless if its in the gym or on the competition floor we are all on the same team.

The tides do change, when its 3-2-1 go and yes I want to beat the girl next to me but competition CAN be healthy. Once the workout is over and we’re both rolling around on the ground in the same amount of pain, it’s all high-fives and “good jobs.” You will find no ego or resentment because we choose every single day to celebrate each other rather than tear each other down.

This topic comes up for discussion as many well-known female athletes are speaking out against the beauty standards that live within competition. That there is a focus on what we look like versus what our bodies can do and as that discussion happens, this one that I’m speaking on is thriving at the same time. I didn’t sign-up to be compared to the woman standing next to me and I also didn’t put in the work to live in a world where women don’t support other women.

If you are in my life, you will find me standing on the sidelines cheering for your successes because to me if SHE’S winning, we’re ALL winning.