Why Athletes Compare Themselves to Others (and Why That's Not Always Bad)
If your athlete is constantly comparing themselves to other athletes, you don't necessarily need to teach them to stop. Instead, help them learn how to use comparison as information. Encourage them to notice what another athlete is doing well, get curious about what they can learn from it, and then bring their attention back to what they can control. Comparison becomes a problem when “They're getting better” turns into “I'm falling behind,” or “They made the team” becomes “I'm not good enough.”
September is here, which means a lot of our kids are heading back to school, back to their teams and back into environments where it is almost impossible not to compare themselves to everyone around them.
Who got faster over the summer? Who made which team? Who seems more confident? Who has a new group of friends? Where do I fit now?
There is a lot of messaging out there telling our kids to stop comparing themselves to other people. I don't agree.
Comparison isn't the problem. It's what you do next that matters.
Comparing Yourself to Other Athletes Isn't the Problem
Let's say your athlete comes back to practice and realizes one of their teammates got a lot better over the summer. They could think, “They're so much better than me now. I'm falling behind.” Or they could think, “Wow, they've gotten so much better. I wonder what they did differently this summer?”
Maybe they trained differently or worked on a particular skill. Maybe they became more consistent. Maybe there's something your athlete can learn from what they did and experiment with in their own training.
Same comparison. Completely different outcome.
I actually want athletes to notice people who are doing things well. Watch the runner who stays relaxed when the pace picks up, the teammate who communicates well under pressure or the player who makes a mistake and gets right back into the next play. What are they doing that works? Is there something your athlete can learn from them and try themselves?
Or, as I sometimes tell athletes, what can you steal from them?
Not literally, obviously. Please don't send your child to practice tomorrow to steal someone's soccer cleats and tell them Margaret from LEAP said it was okay.
The point isn't to pretend we don't notice when someone else is doing well. It's to notice without immediately making their success mean something about us.
When Comparison Becomes a Story About You
This is where comparison can start to get tricky for athletes.
“They got faster” is information. “I'm falling behind” is the story their brain has attached to that information.
“They made the team” is information. “I'm not good enough” is the story.
“They seem really confident” can simply be something your athlete has noticed. But it can quickly become, “I'll never be as confident as they are.”
This distinction matters because athletes often don't realize when they've moved from noticing something about another person to making a judgment about themselves. Once that happens, comparison stops giving them useful information and starts becoming a way to beat themselves up.
Rather than telling an athlete to stop comparing, we can help them separate what they actually know from what their brain has added to the story. What did you notice? What are you assuming that means about you?
That gives them somewhere much more useful to go next.
Use a Scientist Mindset
This is part of what I call having a Scientist Mindset. Instead of immediately attaching a judgment to what they notice, I want athletes to get curious about it. A scientist gathers information, asks questions and experiments with what might work. Athletes can do the same thing.
If another runner seems able to stay relaxed when the pace gets hard, what are they doing? If a teammate has become much more confident with the ball, what changed? If someone seems able to recover from mistakes quickly instead of carrying them into the next play, what does your athlete notice about how they respond?
The question becomes less about, “Where do I rank compared to them?” and more about, “What can I learn from them?”
Don't compare to rank yourself. Compare to learn.
There is an important second half to this, though. Once your athlete has gathered whatever information is useful, their attention needs to come back to themselves.
What do I want to work on? What's in my control? What's my next step?
Your athlete can't control who else gets faster, who makes the team, who gets more playing time or who appears incredibly confident walking into practice. They can control what they do with that information. They can notice, learn, try something different and then get back to their own work.
What Parents Can Do When Their Athlete Starts Comparing
We can help our kids make this shift too, and sometimes that means resisting our instinct to immediately make them feel better.
If your athlete comes home and says, “You should see how good one of my teammates got over the summer,” you might want to jump in with, “You're just as good as they are!”
I understand the instinct. We hear the comparison and worry that their confidence is taking a hit, so we want to reassure them. But we may actually have a better opportunity sitting right in front of us.
You could ask, “What do you think they did to improve?” or “Is there anything they're doing that you'd like to try?”
Now you're helping your athlete move from judging themselves against someone else to learning from them.
And if they've already moved into the story of “Everyone is getting better and I'm falling behind,” we don't necessarily have to argue with them about whether that's true. We can get curious about what's underneath it and then help them bring their attention back to something they can influence.
“What do you want to work on?”
“What's one thing that's in your control?”
“What would you like to get better at this month?”
There is a big difference between helping an athlete build confidence and trying to convince them that they are just as good as everyone else. Confidence isn't built by never noticing that someone else is faster, stronger or further ahead. Part of becoming a steady athlete is learning that someone else's success doesn't have to become evidence of your own inadequacy.
Our kids are going to compare themselves. I don't think our job is to convince them not to.
We can teach them how to use comparison to learn, rather than using it as evidence that they're not enough.
They can notice what someone else is doing well, get curious about it, take whatever information is useful and then bring their attention back to themselves: What do I want to work on? What's in my control? What's my next step?
That's a pretty useful skill for the field, the classroom and, frankly, the rest of life too.
Not sure what to say in the moment?
It can be hard to know what to say when your athlete is nervous, frustrated, disappointed or being hard on themselves.
I created the LEAP Parent Cheat Sheet to make those moments a little easier. It gives you simple things to say before, during and after competition to help support your athlete without adding more pressure.
