When I workout I like to be by myself. I am always determined to get the most out of all my workouts, sometimes becoming obsessive about doing all the exercises I know. When I work out by myself rather than with a friend, I'm not distracted and can accomplish more. However, I recently found out that I will actually try and push my self harder when I workout with a friend.
When I was home this past week, my friend and I took a pilates class together. We both do pilates regularly so I thought that I would be fine in terms of keeping up. However, I was wrong. I started to get tired about halfway through and I looked over at my friend and she was not even sweating! It looked like the class was too easy for her. At that moment, I started to work even harder than I already was. I didn't like feeling like the class was too hard for me and too easy for my friend. I needed to step up my game. At the end of the class I surprisingly felt great. I really felt like I accomplished something. I feel that my friends ability to make the class look easy helped me reach new limits in my own workout. She pushed me to work harder and it helped me to do exercises that I couldn't before.
In one of my previous posts For Fitness, Push Yourself I posted an article that explains how a chemical in our bodies signals to our muscles when we workout. And when we really ramp up our workouts, we gain greater results. The harder we workout the more pronounced the results are. After actually experiencing a hard one, I now understand that great benefits can result. Now, I don't think that every time you go to the gym you have to go crazy and run eight miles. I believe that pushing yourself to a new limit, like a half a mile more than you did yesterday, is all it takes to reap the benefits of feeling good.
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