competitive vs easy exercise
 

one thing you see alot of lately with things like cycling or distance running or crossfit is where they try to get new personal bests times and have more goals but if you could see their faces or the reaction afterwards when they drop on the floor half dead lol saying that was tough. is that sort of thing bad for you in the long term? notice the way you need more time to recover and more injury risk, it almost seems like like something from a cult pressuring you to do better lol i think easy zone exercise is more beneficial and your not half dead afterwards, starting to think i should just do my own thing now at my own pace rather than trying to get faster times, i mean eventually you reach your peak and genetics play a part here so you cant do much else no matter how much you train yeah.

Some people seem to have been born (or raised?) with the competitive gene. I certainly wasn't. Getting from A to B is satisfaction enough. No reason to do it faster than the next guy or faster than I did yesterday. :)

Some researchers say that exercise with short bouts of intensity are best. They resemble what our bodies were made to do. Get the heart rate up, then let it come down. Our bodies were developed to walk a lot more than we do and occasionally we needed to run (to hunt dinner) but not for long stretches.

Yep......I was a competitive power-lifter in my late teens and early 20's and while I stopped competing at about age 25 I never stopped going to the gym and lifting.

As I got into my 50's and realized that I should back off the weight I use, it was a constant battle to do so!

I'd be driving to the gym and telling myself..."okay now...you don't compete anymore....you're not going to compete...you're just a 50 something guy trying to stay fit and healthy....you really don't need to handle that much weight"

And I'd tell myself that but then get in the gym and go nutz with the weights like always!

It took a couple of years but I have backed off the weight and raised the number of reps per set....but I still train sets to failure....just at higher reps and lower weight.

So yeah....I am very competitive by nature and that is a trait that's hard to tame.....both personally and professionally

Being competitive can be good, as long as you're not over competitive, it can be a negative. On the same token, if you are happy to just do your own thing at your own pace, then power to ya!