To scale or not to scale

     Morning everyone. Wound up waking up to a snow covered car... so that's wonderful. I think I'm about ready for the weather to be over with. I'm also ready to start rambling, so lets get to that instead.

     So, we've talked about scaling before, but I think it's an important topic to touch on again. I bring this up because, as you may have seen, I've been a little under the weather lately. When I get back into the WODs... I'm probably going to be scaling.

     We scale a multiple ways, for a number of reasons. For me, I'll have to be scaling back load and intensity. The reasons, well as I said, I'm a bit sick. Coming back into the WODs at 111% may just be overdoing it. But, that's just me. How else do we sclae?

     Load: when a WOD calls for a certain Rx weight, we can scale it back to our ability. Lets take for instance the WOD calls for a 275/185 lb deadlift. Ok, so maybe that is a weight that you can move, but not quickly. We need to use a weight that will allow you to keep our power up. So maybe scale it to 225/135 lbs, and the WOD will be a bit smother. Even dropping your box jump from 20" to 16" would be the same type of scaling.

     Intensity: this is simply what we do on our own. Again, its the ability to not go full bore. So instead of focusing on moving as fast as possible, it may be better to slow down and focus on perfect form. We may not have the highest power output WOD, but we are still moving and still getting fit.

     Reps: this goes along with scaling back intensity. Fran (and many WODs) are a 21-15-9. Though that doesn't seem "too bad", its 45 reps... and that may be too much, especially for people just starting. So, change it to 15-12-9, and that moves us down to 36 reps. We can also do the same for rounds. Say we have a 5 round WOD, there's nothing wrong with being bumped down to 3 rounds. Especially you finish your 3rd round by the time people are finishing their 5th.

     ROM: this is one of the later things I would choose to scale. Reasons behind scaling this would due to medical injuries. If there is an issue with squatting to full depth, it may be a lot wiser to squat to a high box. Again, we're always trying to nail our full range of motion. Even when you scale to doing pushups on a bar/bench, we're still just scaling load, but achieving the same range-of-motion.

     So don't be afraid to scale, and don't be upset if we ask you to scale. We ask you to scale because you will benefit from it. You will still get strong, you will still get fitter, and if you keep it up, you will do doing WOD as Rx quicker. So scale back, move well... and do burpees (no scaling on that).


Michele muscle-up from CrossFit Newcastle on Vimeo.

3,2,1 GO!
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Yesterday's WOD:

Rest Day
No worries, this was a scheduled day off... back to it tomorrow