Deadlift 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 reps

Amy is half way through the Foundations Course and has great form.

Amy is half way through the Foundations Course and has great form.

When describing CrossFit we stress that CrossFit is scalable to the needs, abilities, and goals of the individual. The main site dishes out workouts with prescribed weights for women and men.  While this helps us to understand the desired effect and intensity of each workout, the “prescribed” weight is in many ways an arbitrary number.  Arbitrary because we have seen athletes push the envelope and perform workouts with heavier weights than prescribed and turn in competitive, if not top, times.  In addition, just because an athlete can do one workout as written doesn’t mean they necessarily have the ability to do all the workouts as written.  The solution is to scale those workouts, but how?  Most often, a scaled weight is decided upon with a casual conversation, a few numbers thrown out, and an athlete choosing one.  In a community that counts fat blocks in sets of 3 almonds it seems shocking that we decide upon scaled weights for our WODs with casual conversation!

Enter a systematic method for scaling workouts based on the major lifts, your abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and the desired response of a specific workout.  Goodbye arbitrary scaling, hello more potent training sessions.  We’ll describe this system during a few classes this week to get everyone on board.