In my opinion, one of the most important yet misunderstood aspects of Crossfit will always be scaling and progressions; as it is as much of an art as it is a science. According to the Crossfit journal, by correctly altering and customizing workouts we can increase our work capacity, and subsequently make training more gratifying. So if that’s the case, why do so many athletes avoid it? And why, to many athletes, does the word “scaled” carry such a negative connotation?
The word “scaled” should not diminish one’s efforts, and working on progressions does not mean we are bad at something. Just look at the root word “Progress”, which means to make movement towards a destination. By using progressions, we are able to learn the mechanics and movements patterns that set us up for success down the road.
At Industry athletics, rather than using the labels “Scaled” and “RX”, we offer three different tracks for the workout of the day: Fitness, Performance, & Open. This is something I love about our community, as it provides guidance. From there, our coaches will often take it one step further and offer additional options and/or rep schemes to help their athletes maintain proper form. These alterations are meant to ensure an athlete maintains the intended stimulus (the duration of the wod, the range of motion, or the intensity level) despite their personal limitations, such as experience, injury, illness or range of motion.
This mindset reminds me of a podcast episode title Moving Through Injury with Dan Pope and Ryan Debell by Barbell Shrugged, where the host stated that “Scaling isn’t scaling, it’s optimizing.” By picking the appropriate track for where we are in our fitness journey, we are optimizing the workout written to meet our individual needs and goals. We are taking a one-size-fits-all WOD and tailoring it, to give ourselves the best workout and the best results possible.
Even with these tracks however, we still have the occasional athlete that wants to know what’s considered to be “RX”. Here’s where I let you in on a little secret that I learned from the Crossfit adaptive athlete course.
“Every athlete has the ability to be an RX athlete”
Now before you get your reebok shorts in a bunch and say, “well according to the Crossfit Open, I’m not an RX athlete”, I want you to revisit the definition of RX in the english dictionary, and also to remember that the Open is a whole different ball game than what we do on a regular basis.
Rx
/a:r’eks/ abbreviation
Stands for prescription
The point here being that if you are following the prescription provided for you by your coach, you are essentially doing RX. It’s very similar to when a doctor prescribes medication, in that depending on various factors, you might be given a different dosage or even a different medication to get the desired results.
The Crossfit Gymnastics course Coach David & I took this past weekend further drove home this point. There Pamela Agnon stressed the importance of prerequisites, and how coaches can combine static and dynamic movements to create a similar stimulus for athletes. For example, let’s say we have an athlete that is struggling with Ring dips; their prescription might turn into box dips, accompanied by a :15 second static hold on the rings. A combination that lets them gain strength on the box, achieve the full range of motion, and work on being able to stabilize on the rings. Eventually that strength and stabilization work will merge together and help them to advance towards completing the movement originally written.
To conclude, stop viewing scaling as something to be shameful of. In fact, stop calling it scaling all together. View it as progressions, tailoring, customizing, altering and optimizing. In doing so, you will not only have a positive mindset but you find yourself inching towards your goals.
-Coach Nicole