The Comparison Trap in Lifting

Philip Pape 0:01

You walk into the gym feeling pretty good about yourself. You've been consistent for six months and your squat is finally at body weight. Then you see someone your age warming up with what you consider your max. Your confidence evaporates. You start second-guessing everything. Maybe you should just stick to the machines in the corner where nobody can see how weak you are. Sound familiar, or something like it. That moment when someone else's strength makes you question your own worth as a lifter here's what nobody tells you. That feeling is not only normal. It is completely missing the point of why you're there in the first place. So today we're going to break down why your current numbers are irrelevant to your success, how the comparison game is holding you back and how to think differently so that your training is more effective and enjoyable.

Philip Pape 1:00

Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that helps you build a strong, healthy physique using evidence, engineering and efficiency. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and today we're going to tackle something that affects all of you. It affects every single person who picks up a barbell, and that is myself included the toxic relationship we have with our lifting numbers, with our strength. The title of this episode who Cares how Strong you Are has nothing to do with the fact that we don't care about strength. It's the fact that we don't care about your current strength. We care about where you've been and where you're going and what process you're following, whether the process of improvement is in place for you. And when we think about the psychology here, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's the voice in your head that whispers. You're weak when you see someone deadlifting twice your max or when you compare your numbers to a friend. Or maybe your friend picks on you a little bit for that in good spirit perhaps, but it might cut you at your core, depending on who you are. The embarrassment when someone asks how much you bench and your answer feels pathetic. Or you don't want to answer. The way that you avoid certain exercises because your numbers are quote unquote too low. But what if I told you this entire mindset is not helpful at all. It is preventing you from reaching your true potential. What if the secret, the magic pill to getting stronger and building more muscle and actually enjoying your training has nothing to do with where you currently stack up with your absolute numbers or against other people? So that's what we're going to look at today and I guarantee this episode is going to change how you think about this, because it's often the thing that is holding people back, not all the other information and the training programs and all of that.

Your Current Numbers Don't Define You

Philip Pape 2:44

Now, before we get into the topic, if you like this kind of mindset content, I'd love to hear from you and I'd love to send you more like it. To build not just physical strength but also the mental resilience To do that. Just join my email list. Go to witsandweightscom slash email. I'll send you exclusive content there that you're not going to find anywhere else. A lot of it is strategies for overcoming the mental barriers that are holding you back from doing your best, achieving your best. Physique health, confidence, all the things you want fat loss, the specifics, the generalities, the principles, the methods all of it. Go to whatsaweightscom slash email or click the link in the show notes and then, when you're on there that's another conduit to reach me you can reply by email. I'll always get back to you personally with a response.

Philip Pape 3:29

All right, let's get into the show. Let's start with the elephant in the room or the gym. You're scrolling through social media, right? We all do it, and you see someone, your age, someone you compare yourself to benching more than you. Maybe they're benching 300, while you're working toward 200. Honestly, the numbers don't matter. In fact, that's part of the trap. Or you're in the gym and the person next to you is squatting what looks like your max for a warmup set, and so what happens in your brain?

Philip Pape 3:58

If you're like most people, there is a cocktail of shame, of inadequacy, of self-doubt, and it just floods your system. It's a very human thing. You start questioning your training, your genetics and your worth as a lifter, your self-worth. So much of what holds us back is in what we think about ourselves as people, and we tie some of the things we do and some of the performance that we achieve as equivalent to our identity. And it just isn't. This is what I call the comparison trap. It's one of the most destructive forces out there, especially in the world of fitness, especially today with social media, and here's why it's so damaging. It shifts your focus from your own progress to your relative position in an imaginary hierarchy, a construct, the matrix, the abstract. It doesn't mean anything to you and yet you put yourself in that leaderboard and again, it's a very human thing to do. We love competition, we love comparison, but the problem with that hierarchy is that it's arbitrary.

Philip Pape 5:10

Strong compared to what? Compared to who? A power lifter, a sedentary person who works in an office, Someone who's been training for 10 years or 20 years versus your one or two years? Someone with different genetics, different training history, different body proportions? The list goes on. And the truth is there is no universal standard for strong enough. I really don't like the strength standards.

Philip Pape 5:35

I might've done one episode on them a long time ago and even then talked about how a lot of this is relative to your body weight and relative to your history and your capability and your process. There is only stronger than you were yesterday, than you were last month, than you were last year, and that is the only comparison that actually matters for your progress, for your health and even yes, for your well-being and happiness. Not how strong you are, but how strong you are compared to where you've been. And I can think of at least a dozen clients right now including some that have had check-ins this week who come to me convinced that they're weak in some way because their deadlift is only this number, you know, 185 or 225. And very often we'll look back at their history, whether it's with me, or even before they started being, we'll say well, what was it six months, six months ago? Well, you've added 90 pounds.

Why Progress Matters More Than Strength

Philip Pape 6:35

Your deadlift, that's a phenomenal achievement, but it's hard to see that because you're comparing yourself to other people. I have another client who her strength is going up very slowly, but her performance in her sport has gone up massively, to the point where she just won an elite competition, almost surprising herself, and it's because she had focused on her health and performance and strength. And that is an outcome of following the process. And even then she expressed concern for tying her self-worth to that achievement, which I agree. It's not something we want to do. We want to separate the two and understand that the performance is simply an indicator of the process we're following in the moment and once we shift to that progress, things can change. Your motivation will start to go up, because that's the thing that feeds back to telling us that the actions we're taking make sense, the behaviors we are doing, we are engaging in, are serving us, and guess what that does? That psychology feeds back in to our dedication to the craft, to improving our form, to avoiding ego lifting which can injure you, and then, ironically, this often leads to an increase in the numbers, in the strength, in the progress.

Philip Pape 7:53

Now you might be thinking but Philip, don't numbers matter at all, right, isn't getting stronger? The whole point? Isn't wits and weights and your strength-centered, muscle-centered approach, all about strength? Well, that's a great question. Numbers absolutely matter. They matter as feedback, they matter as motivation, they matter as markers of progress, but they don't define your worth or your potential or your identity as a lifter. All right. So think about it this way your current squat number, your PR, your 5RM, whatever you're measuring, is simply a snapshot of where you are right now and it's given your training history, your genetics, your recoverability, your life circumstances. It's not a permanent label, it's not a ceiling, it's just data and, in fact, 20 years from now, your current squat number might be lower because of all those factors. And yet it's still going to be a snapshot of all those things and it's not good or bad. That has gone up or down. It's just an indicator of where things are.

Philip Pape 8:56

And I've seen, for example, 50 year old women who start with their body weight training, maybe some light dumbbells, eventually incorporate barbells, machines and get stronger. I've seen 60-plus-year-old men who couldn't deadlift 95 pounds work up to pulling 300. And so their age or starting strength or what have you didn't predict their potential. Because there's plenty of older folks walking around this earth who will continue to be weak and unhealthy and unfit and have a poor lifespan and poor healthspan, and so it's hard. You can't predict your potential. But what can predict your potential? Guess what can predict it? Your consistency and your mindset. Like those two things. When I see someone who is committed to taking action and building consistency through the support structure we have, through habit formation, et cetera, and has a positive approach, that everything they do is a chance to learn and grow, no matter what.

Philip Pape 9:59

No failure is a bad thing. Every failure is just data. That is a form of grit and persistence that will never fail you for the rest of your life. And I know this from personal experience because my numbers do not always go up. I've had injuries, I've had surgeries, I've had situations where I'm in a fat loss phase, I'm just not eating enough, and I've had situations where it was slightly unexplainable why my numbers didn't go up. There's usually a reason, and sometimes the number going up in and of itself isn't the be-all, end-all as well.

Philip Pape 10:28

There's research on neuroplasticity. You've probably heard the term before. It's about our brains. It shows that our brains are very adaptable. They can improve for the rest of our lives, well into our 80s and 90s, and the same principle applies to strength and muscle. You know your current numbers are not your destiny. Now I'm not saying that you can perpetually push your PR all the way up forever. We know we can't do that, but nor do you necessarily want to do that or need to do that.

Philip Pape 10:53

What actually defined you as a lifter is your consistency, your form, because that's a skill. It's a skill that you're getting better at your effort. Effort includes both making the attempt and making the attempt with intensity or with effort, right, that kind, so kind of different types of effort. And then, of course, your willingness to learn and adapt, having that growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. And these are the qualities that are absolutely going to predict long-term success, no matter what, no matter where you happen to be today, regardless of the numbers. So when you're constantly worried about how your numbers are stacking up, there are some destructive, very destructive things that are happening that will slow your progress when you get caught up in this race.

Redefining What Strength Means

Philip Pape 11:39

The first one is ego lifting. You're going to load the bar with weight that you could barely handle, just to hit a certain number. You're going to compromise your form. You're going to increase your injury risk that you can barely handle. Just to hit a certain number. You're going to compromise your form. You're going to increase your injury risk. Don't do it. I see it all the time Someone loading up the bench with weight they can barely control. They get a half rep and if they don't have spotters or spotter arms, it could be a dangerous situation and they might even call that a PR. If they barely get it up and it's just, you know, a half-assed lift. There's no benefit in doing that whatsoever. The second thing is you're going to avoid exercises because you feel like the numbers are embarrassing. Right, you're going to skip the overhead press just because you can only press whatever weight 95 pounds and it's not moving up, so you just skip it. Well, that kind of exacerbates the problem, doesn't it Right? These might be what you need for balanced development, for injury prevention, for making progress.

Philip Pape 12:29

The third destructive thing that happens here is you get stuck in, let's say, the wrong rep ranges or trying to do something over and over again. Right, you only want to test your one rep max, because that's the number everybody cares about, and you haven't pushed it up. And there you go, um, and you start to limit your variation. And then you're you start to backslide, cause you're not serving your goals. You don't even have a specific intentionality or purpose with your current training block that helps you focus on okay, I'm focused on volume or intensity, or you know, these rep ranges or this kind of cycling through my lifts or whatever. And then the last part, which maybe is the most important part, and the sad part is, you lose the joy in training. Every workout then becomes a test, a thing you have to do, instead of an opportunity to get better. Instead of celebrating the fact that you can move heavy weight through space, which is a blessing, something to be grateful for you're lamenting that it's not heavy enough.

Philip Pape 13:28

So how do we fix all this? How do we maintain the motivation that the numbers can provide, but avoid the toxic comparison, the comparison game? And so I think it starts with redefining what strength even means. Right Now, we know the physical, the physics definition is production of force, right, but it's not about hitting arbitrary numbers. It's about continuous improvement within your own context of strength. That's why we tend to lose sight of that. We tend to focus too much on strength in and of itself rather than the improvement of, or building of, strength. So, instead of asking yourself how much can I lift, ask how much stronger am I getting? Instead of am I strong, ask yourself am I stronger than I was?

Philip Pape 14:14

I'm a huge fan of reframe. Anybody who's worked with me or is in a physique university or you know, talk to me for any length of time knows I love to reframe, and a very powerful reframe is that every single rep you complete is a victory. Every workout or training session where you show up is an achievement. Every week that you consistently train and you didn't skip a session, you move things around to make it work is is really building something significant. It's a legacy for your body and for your strength.

Philip Pape 14:43

So I want you to start thinking about strength in terms of compound interest. Albert Einstein allegedly called compound interest the eighth wonder of the world. Did you know that? It's a cool little thing? I don't know if it's true, but I heard it. Small, consistent additions, right, just like compound interest of your money, compound interest of your habits James Clear talked about it in Atomic Habits. They're going to compound over time into massive, massive gains.

Philip Pape 15:09

Right, a five pound increase on the bar might seem like nothing in out of context, but if you do that consistently over months and over years, you are going to be amazed where you end up to the point where it's almost hard to put perspective on it and actually look back and say, oh my God, look what I did in just a month or three months or a year. I still do that. I still think wow. I have a lot that I want to accomplish. And sometimes I have to take a breath. Look at a before and after photo, look at my numbers from a year ago or two years ago. You know anything. Whatever.

Philip Pape 15:39

It makes sense to compare yourself with yourself of the past, not with anyone else. You could be amazed, you could surprise yourself, and this is why I love working with beginners. Sometimes and I say sometimes a little bit sarcastically, because there's pros and cons right Beginners are not yet corrupted by this comparison culture. Usually, like when it comes to strength cause, they're just not in that world yet. They're excited about the small wins they celebrate. You know, adding five pounds to the squat, they see how much change they can, they can um induce in their body in a short period of time, and that excitement, that focus on personal progress. We need to maintain that, and I know it gets a little bit more challenging the more you grow. But the more you grow and the more capable you are, the more you realize the effort that it takes and you tend to step it up to the next level as you go forward. So if I were to give you some practical strategies for maintaining this, because we all love like specific tools, don't we?

Philip Pape 16:36

The first thing I'm going to say is to track your progress. Don't just track where you're at, but track the improvement over time. You know your training log, your app, whatever, whether it's food training, whatever, biofeedback, anything you want to track, so that you can look at where you were three months ago or six months ago, a year ago, and that's your reference point for where you've come. Right, and maybe not every single metric has quote unquote gone up, and that's okay. But look at the totality of it. Look at the totality and don't discount factors like your relationships, your success at work, your mindset, like you could make very little strength gains, but have a much better mindset about the whole thing and be enjoying what you're doing. Isn't that a huge amount of progress right there mentally? So track your progress. The second thing is celebrate all the non-numerical victories as well, and I kind of just alluded to this, right, maybe you felt more skilled with your squat today, maybe your form was better, maybe you recovered faster between sets or feel a little more, you know, heart healthy, right, just just healthier in general, and these improvements are just as important as adding weight to the bar. They really are.

Finding Joy in Your Own Journey

Philip Pape 17:42

The third thing here is to understand progress is not linear. I have to keep hammering home this message. You're going to have bad days, you're going to have plateaus, you're going to have periods where your numbers go down due to a number of factors life stress, recovery, injury, intentionally because you're in a fat loss phase and you just can't maintain all that strength. It's okay. It doesn't mean you're getting weaker. It means you're human and it's part of the process. In fact, those moments might teach you more than any other.

Philip Pape 18:14

Fourth, regarding the psychology here of progress is focusing on the process, not the outcome. I've said these things many times, but I can't say them enough, because humans are really bad at staying motivated toward a goal that's far away. If you currently bench 95 and you want to bench 225, that's very hard to maintain motivation to get there unless you have micro goals that include process-related goals. Meaning I'm going to bench twice a week in my program, like that is a micro goal that is process-oriented, right, the numbers are going to follow, but the process is the thing you control. You're optimizing the process for the outcome, but you're still optimizing and focusing on the process.

Philip Pape 18:56

And then the last thing I have for you is that, remember, strength is specific, because being quote unquote strong at powerlifting doesn't necessarily make you strong at, you know, rock climbing or BJJ or, uh, you know, even just other movements in the gym. Yes, strength is a production of force. Yes, strength can be measured in many cases by numbers, but it also depends on what your strength goal is, if you're trying to develop strength or muscle, some combination, if you have a sport that you care about. In other words, there's lots of things that are valuable when we talk about strength. As much as I come from the starting strength world, where number on the bar is important, that's for novices, that's for beginners, that's an easy metric that you can control, that goes up, but then at some point you have to branch out.

Philip Pape 19:44

So those are some techniques for the psychology of this, and I think something that's going to surprise you here is that some of the strongest people I know, some of the strongest people I know I can think of people that I don't know personally because they're big influencers, or I can think of people I do know personally, you know in terms of absolute numbers. They're also some of the most insecure about their lifting. Why? Well, guess what? They're doing the same thing. They've achieved impressive numbers, but then they're still comparing themselves to elite athletes and they're still feeling inadequate and they're still chasing external validation. Now, a little bit of this is okay. So I'm going to give everybody here, myself included, some permission to drive yourself, to drive yourself to improve and always want to be improving. Right, that's not really what I'm talking about.

Philip Pape 20:29

There is a positive angle on that, but there's also a very negative one that we've addressed, related to self-worth and external validation. That, I think, is the dangerous part. On the flip side, I know people who are never going to bench 225, but their lives look completely different than they did before they started training. They've gone from being unable to carry groceries upstairs to deadlifting their body weight. They've built confidence. They've improved health markers we can't discount how huge that is from A1C to lipids, to blood pressure, to resting heart rate, all of it and they discovered what their bodies are capable of.

The Only Person to Compete With

Philip Pape 21:07

Right Now, who is winning there? Is it the person with the bigger numbers, or the person who's transformed their life and the positive psychology around it? And so the person with the bigger numbers, or the person who's transformed their life and the positive psychology around it? And so the most successful people and lifters that I work with or have had the pleasure to know. They've got one thing in common They've learned to find satisfaction in their own journey. They use numbers as tools. That's all they are. They're not measures of self-worth, they're just tools. They're data. They're motivated by getting better, not reaching a certain bigger number than someone else. Sure, they want their own numbers to go up, absolutely. We all have that inside of us and that can drive us. But stop comparing yourself to others, and you know. The cool thing Is that this thinking applies to everything your career, your relationships, your personal growth. Stop comparing your chapter one to someone else's chapter 20 and focus on your own progress and everything will change.

Philip Pape 22:08

So the next time you're in the gym and that voice starts telling you you're not strong enough, remember that you are not competing with anyone but yourself. You're not trying to impress anyone but you. You're not trying to lift someone else's weight. You're trying to lift more than you could yesterday. That is it, and that's not just good advice for the gym, that's a philosophy for life that I believe will serve anyone quite well.

Philip Pape 22:29

All right, if today's episode resonated with you. If you want more content that builds both physical and mental strength, join my email list at witsandweightscom. Slash email or click the link in the show notes. I love to write up and send out strategies in the email list to develop a mindset that will serve you not just in the gym but in every area of your life where you're working to improve, because your strength journey is again more than numbers on the bar. It's becoming the person who shows up, who persists and who finds joy in the process of getting better. All right, until next time. Keep using your wits lifting those weights and remember the only person you need to be stronger than is who you were yesterday. I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.