How to scale the workouts

Something which stops a lot of people from starting Crossfit is because the workouts look so daunting. They mightn’t have done the exercise before, let alone try to do it as many times as possible, with a heavy weight, for up to twenty minutes. Or, they can’t even do 1 pull up, let alone a hundred!

Crossfit even scared me for this very reason. I didn’t think I could do it so I just didn’t do it.

Scaling is the answer to all your Crossfit dilemmas. Well, most of them anyway. Scaling usually means dropping the number of repetitions or the weight so that the workout can be completed. So how do we scale?

If you’re interested in gaining an overall fitness I believe the first thing you should scale down is the weight, so that you can complete all the reps needed to do the workout. If you’re fatigued afterwards, and you’ve kept moving throughout, you’ll still have a gain in strength.

You should aim to scale down just enough so that the last few reps take a bit more effort, force you to really focus and you need to catch your breath towards the end. If you’ve scaled down to far, you’ll find you busting out the last few reps will relative ease. You’ll know better the next time.

Don’t let your ego get in the way when scaling down weights. Any sort of Metcon workouts should not be done as loads and loads of single reps. If you’re doing that, you’re not getting the most out of the workout.

If you feel you’re lacking in <a href=”http://www.crossfit.com/cf-journal/WLSTANDARDS.pdf” title=”Strength Standards - Mark Rippetoe”>strength</a>, then you could up the weight and slow down the workout. If the workout calls for 21, 15 and 9 reps, you should lift in sets of 3, 5, or 7. Don’t sacrifice the metcon effect of workout completely, you should still have an elevated heart rate throughout. Your rest periods between these mini sets shouldn’t be lasting a minute or more. Crossfit has enough max rep days (one rep max, three rep max, 5 rep max) to allow you to focus on your strength.

Sometimes workouts are just too tough, or will take too long to complete. In that case, it might be necessary to drop down the number of reps and the weight. Instead of doing 50 reps, then 40, 30, 20, 10 you can do either 50, 30, 10 or 25, 20, 15, 10, 5.

The 50, 30, 10 progression would allow you to work on more localised endurance as you’re working the exercise/muscle for a longer period before moving on to the next exercise. The 25, 20, 15, 10, 5 progression will work more of a systemic endurance, since you’re moving back and forth between the exercises relatively quickly.

<a href=”http://forum.brandxmartialarts.com/viewforum.php?f=16″ title=”Brand X Martial Arts - Scaled WoDs”>Brand X martial arts</a> post a scaled version of Crossfit’s main site workout everyday if you’re following that workout schedule.

The key thing, however, is that you should start Crossfit no matter what your fitness level. Scaling down is not an admission of weakness or something to be ashamed of. Even super fit athletes will need to scale down at times. The workouts posted are something to aim towards, as a gold standard. They are aspirational for the vast majority of starting out, but read people’s testimonies of Crossfit and you’ll see just how quickly people moved from “puppies” to “big dawgs”. But more importantly, they improved their health and fitness from day one.