by Brian Cannone
There are many positive things that come from participating in a physique competition. But perhaps the most important factor of all is the self-confidence that it gives you! Each competition and each year that you compete brings you more challenges and more benefits from which you grow. The biggest thing that grows after every competition and every year is you. Your own progression is often times overlooked and you should be proud of where you started and where you are now. You should take pictures of yourself and collect pictures from your competitions. Your goal should not only be winning but it should also be about progression! Progressing yourself as a person and as a competitor should always be your number one goal.
Why should you take photos of yourself? For the very same reason why you should collect photos of yourself from each and every competition: confidence. When you look at yourself from the very beginning when you first started out and then to yourself as a competitor now you will undoubtedly get a huge boost of confidence! A physique competition is about the health and fitness of your body. What better way to get more confidence than to see how you have progressed throughout the years? Too often have competitors lost sight of their humble beginnings and overlook the progression you have made. This is a seemingly small mistake, but looks can be deceiving! Every little bit counts and the more confidence you have in yourself and your body, the more confidence you will emit on stage!
Your main goal for competing should be bettering yourself. If you continue to better yourself year after year, the possibilities of where you can end up are limitless. If you make progression your number one priority, you have nowhere to go but up! Each competition and each year you need to make yourself better. This means better eating habits than the year before, better routine schedules than the competition before, etc. Your success in life is a direct result of your progression of skill and of yourself throughout the years. Why is progression often times overlooked? This is simply because most people are concentrating on one thing, the next step. Now when we say that you should be aware of where you started from, this does not mean living in the past. This means taking your past and letting it shape who you are now as a competitor and as an individual. This is why the photo compellation will do you significant justice! If you physically see how much you have grown it gives you that much more energy and that much more perseverance to take yourself to the next level.
While a physique competition is all about your body and confidence, and of course you are competing because you want to win, but the real competition lies within. The real competition is You VS You! You are trying to see how much better you can be than the competition before this one. You are also trying to see how much you have changed from last year. All of this plays a huge factor in your success as a physique competitor. Each time you compete you are taking it as a lesson! You are learning from the new challenges you are facing and from the new competitors that you are going up against. If you use your progression as steps, there is no telling just how high those steps can take you! If you consider a competition only about you competing with others you are going to see that you are not going to make it very far professionally. It all comes down to you competing with yourself. You are competing against the You from the year before! From the competition before this one! When you are taking what you have learned and you are using it to compete against yourself. To outdo yourself.
Each competition you do and every year you compete you just do not know who is going to be on that stage with you. You do however know who you were last competition and how you did. You need to take this knowledge and use it to your full advantage. No, you do not know just who is going to step out onto that stage with you and you do not know just what it is that they bring to the table. But you do know who you are, what your strengths and weaknesses are compared to what they used to be. You need to take all of this into consideration and then you will see that it doesn’t matter who is coming out onto the stage because you know just what version of yourself is also going out onto the stage. When you look at the progression you have made as a competitor you are going to see that all that matters to you is beating yourself out from the year before! Although you do not know what other people are capable of, you do know just exactly what you are capable of!
If your goal as a competitor and as a person is progress, then you can NOT lose! When you are using your last self as a competitor as your competition, you can beat anyone. While your goal in a physique competition is to beat out the other parties and come out on top, your next goal which should be even more important is beating out who you were the competition before. Using photographs of yourself in previous competitions and in previous health and fitness routines you will find that extra oomph that you need to take yourself to the next step. The next step in your career and the next step in your life rely entirely upon yourself and how you view you. You are stepping out onto that stage to beat out yourself, and in doing so you will beat out the others on stage as well.
Each year you do an event you just don’t know who is going on stage with you but if your goal is progress you can’t lose.
