From my personal experience, I would have them take up one or two competitive arts.
Timing yourself to improve your personal best at, say, running, does not count. Running on a track against, or in a longer race against, a small handful of people that you can potentially beat does count, although I would lean toward recommending something where you have to deal with the counter-moves of your opponent. Boxing or kickboxing training that includes sparring against others counts; doing boxing training at a gym that does not do sparring doesn’t count. Playing chess or Go counts. Basketball, hockey, soccer, etc, all count. Playing online competitive video games technically counts under this definition, but I’m excluding it; those mostly make me feel bad.
Having an opponent that will challenge you with counter-moves, and do their best to get one over on you, but who you can beat if you train and try hard enough, has no substitute. Winning against someone who has put everything into the fight gives confidence that you can apply all over the place. Plus it feels great.
My experience: I’ve spent the past two years running and lifting. These mean I look great physically, and am healthy, and get the exercise endorphins and stuff. But they didn’t meet the competitive need! I’ve recently gotten back into boxing at a sparring gym. The competitive aspect of being in the ring, trying to best the other guy, is something I’ve really been missing. It also directs my training at a real concrete purpose, instead of the colder “increase the weight / increase running speed” metric-tracking approach to those forms of exercise.
I also play Go, and it used to serve this purpose well in my life.
(This competitiveness stuff might be more important for men than it is for women—I’m not sure. I’d definitely give this advice to a man, and I’d give it as a ‘maybe’ to a woman. Of course, women can get a lot of value from competition; I’m just not sure if the lack of it would gnaw at them the way it was gnawing at me.)
From my personal experience, I would have them take up one or two competitive arts.
Timing yourself to improve your personal best at, say, running, does not count. Running on a track against, or in a longer race against, a small handful of people that you can potentially beat does count, although I would lean toward recommending something where you have to deal with the counter-moves of your opponent. Boxing or kickboxing training that includes sparring against others counts; doing boxing training at a gym that does not do sparring doesn’t count. Playing chess or Go counts. Basketball, hockey, soccer, etc, all count. Playing online competitive video games technically counts under this definition, but I’m excluding it; those mostly make me feel bad.
Having an opponent that will challenge you with counter-moves, and do their best to get one over on you, but who you can beat if you train and try hard enough, has no substitute. Winning against someone who has put everything into the fight gives confidence that you can apply all over the place. Plus it feels great.
My experience: I’ve spent the past two years running and lifting. These mean I look great physically, and am healthy, and get the exercise endorphins and stuff. But they didn’t meet the competitive need! I’ve recently gotten back into boxing at a sparring gym. The competitive aspect of being in the ring, trying to best the other guy, is something I’ve really been missing. It also directs my training at a real concrete purpose, instead of the colder “increase the weight / increase running speed” metric-tracking approach to those forms of exercise.
I also play Go, and it used to serve this purpose well in my life.
(This competitiveness stuff might be more important for men than it is for women—I’m not sure. I’d definitely give this advice to a man, and I’d give it as a ‘maybe’ to a woman. Of course, women can get a lot of value from competition; I’m just not sure if the lack of it would gnaw at them the way it was gnawing at me.)