HELP US, HELP YOU

The conversation is all too familiar to the coaching staff. An athlete returns to the shop after a period away, say 1-2 weeks, and a coach asks them, “where have you been?”

The athlete replies that they haven’t been in because they suffered a tweak – inside or outside the shop – and they didn’t want to be a burden by coming to class. We’ve heard a lot of variations to the athlete’s why I didn’t come to class statement – not knowing how to modify for injury, not wanting to take a disproportionate amount of the coach’s time, not wanting to scale or modify around the injury, or not wanting to stand out to the rest of the class, to name a few.

We wanted to take this opportunity to set a few things straight.

First of all, it’s 100% encouraged for you to come to class when you have a limitation or something you need to work around. Not only is it encouraged, but the coaches actually expect you to continue coming to class.

Fitness is gained, in part, through consistency. Breaks away from the gym to allow one area of the body to heal, while the rest of your body is completely capable of fitness, is not a recipe for long term consistency. Not to mention, many have found that exercising the parts of the body that are 100% helps the problem area to recover faster.

In addition, we firmly believe that modifying a workout to get IN a workout, is far more beneficial than simply not working out. For many, a tweak can be a show stopper to fantastic momentum. A week spent skipping workouts and all of the sudden it’s hard to get back into that great routine you had just a mere 7 days prior.

Come to class, keep the routine, and heal up. There are literally hundreds of CrossFit movements and variations that could be used to work around your limitation. The coaches are very good and well versed at scaling and modifying movements and workouts based on athlete injuries or limitations.

We’ve scaled and modified for (to name a few):

• A cracked rib from mountain biking
• Plantar fasciitis
• Rotator cuff surgery repairs
• Sprained, strained, twisted, torqued, tweaked, etc. of nearly every joint
• A strained or tight low back
• A neck that was slept on in a funny way
• Ankle, neck, back, knee, shoulder, and wrist surgeries
• An pulled hamstring from an overzealous stretch from first base during intramural softball

So, how do you put this into practice?

The next time you pull, tweak, strain, or run into something that causes you to question whether or not you should come to class, start by signing up for class. Then, email the coach for that class and give them a heads up of what’s going on. When you arrive at the shop, check-in with the coach so they can ask you any needed questions and start to make a plan for the workout modifications for that day. Then, continue to communicate with us as you heal up AND keep getting fit.