Arguably, the most often externally asked question in CrossFit is “What’s the wod?”. Arguably, the most often internally asked question in CrossFit is “Should I attempt this wod Rx or should I scale?”. While I generally cannot answer the first question for you, this two-part post will investigate factors that might influence your decision to scale or go Rx for a wod. Let’s call this to scale or not to scale. For, most days, that is the question.
Before we dive into reasons to potentially scale a wod, let’s first tackle one reason that should never be used as a reason to go Rx (or, for you non-CrossFitters, doing the workout as written without substituting any movements or reducing any weights). Pride. If you simply are doing the workout Rx, weight and movement be damned, just to put that Rx by your name, it’s probably time to reevaluate your motives for doing CrossFit. Blindly Rx-ing wods is a sure way to never meet your goals.
With that being said, here are factors to consider when trying to decide between scaling and Rx-ing a CrossFit wod.
Safety
First and foremost, the number one reason to scale any workout would be safety. Many CrossFit wods call for lifting heavy loads off the ground or above our heads. If a heavy weight causes us to use bad form, such as a rounded back on deadlifts or overarching on a press, we put our bodies in position for injury. Lighter weights after many rounds and repetitions also can cause form sacrifices due to fatigue and this can cause injury just as much as heavy weight. Even body weight movements, such as falling uncontrolled on a pull-up descent, can damage shoulders and surrounding tissue.
Of course, injuries can happen at any time, even when a workout is appropriately scaled. Put yourself in the best position to safely handle the punishment of the wod while still maintaining intensity. Speaking of intensity…
Intensity
The workout of the day is programmed with intention. Sometimes this intention has a strength bias, sometimes the wod favors more conditioning. A good coach should explain the intention of the wod before it is performed. Sometimes there are obvious hints, like the sheer volume of the wod or the prescribed load. Fran, for instance, uses a relatively light weight with the intent to be a total metabolic destroyer. (Yes, I’m aware I borderline should be scaling that wod.) Some workouts depend more on the weight of the barbell to produce the suck effect, like Linda. Sometimes the intensity line between Rx and scaled is very, very blurry.
Take the latest hero wod I did, Morrison. This was a 50-40-30-20-10 of wall balls, KB swings, and box jumps. My box programmed a 35-minute time cap for this workout. After listening to the WODwell strategic advice and contemplating my own abilities… I decided to go Rx. 36:13 later, I finished the workout… time cap be damned – I was absolutely going to finish! But, that leads to the question of did I make the correct decision regarding Rx/scaled?
Things got really spicy really quickly with Morrison. My lower back was tightening from all the swings and jumps, and wall balls just suck in general. There were times when I had to spend many seconds with my hands on my knees, gasping for air. I broke my rounds up into increasingly smaller sets, sometimes getting only 7 wall balls in before needing to rest.
But… I finished pretty near the time cap. So, should I have gone Rx with the 1.5 pood KB and 20# wall ball or should I have maybe gone with the 1 pood and maybe finished closer to 30 minutes? Personally, I feel that if I had not gone Rx and finished with time to spare, I would’ve wished I had gone Rx because I would know I could. But, would that give me as optimal a workout, given that I would take more time and rest more?
One more word on intensity… don’t scale yourself to too low of an intensity. Take Morrison again, if you scaled and completed the wod in less than 20 minutes… you probably scaled too far. CrossFit is supposed to suck sometimes, it’s supposed to get uncomfortable… don’t cheat yourself out of the suck!
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That’s it for Part One on this discussion of scaling versus going Rx for your CrossFit wod. Check back soon for Part Two! If you’re a numbers guy like me… you’re going to love what I have in store for you!
Your turn -> Have you ever scaled a wod and realized afterwards that you could’ve done the workout with less scaling?
Oh man, I need you to teach me this Crossfit lingo.
Arman @ thebigmansworld recently posted…Isolation and Health
Hey Arman!
http://www.winetoweightlifting.com/what-is-a-wod-and-other-crossfit-abbreviations/
🙂
jennifer recently posted…On Motivation
Legend-dairy. (paleo dairy)
Arman @ thebigmansworld recently posted…Chewy Mint Chocolate Chip Protein Bars
I’m gonna write a page just for you so I don’t have to link away to Jen’s blog. =)
Please do. I’ll pay you in….um. Something yum.
Arman @ thebigmansworld recently posted…Chewy Mint Chocolate Chip Protein Bars
Done.
better to scale and have gone lighter/less intense than expected, than do what i did and go full Rx after a long hiatus and end up with a bulging disc.
Ken @ TripFit.co.uk recently posted…TripFit Crossfit WOD 20150212
Ouch! Yeah, definitely have to take it easier and scale after time off, even if just a week!
I often have this dilemma, but for me the dilemma comes in terms of ‘how much do I scale by?’. I have only done a handful of WODs RX so when it comes to scaling I have to make my own choices (coach would always so ‘go heavier’!) on weight.
I think I know where I am with most moves and my maxes – I use the scale weight to determine the WOD – aka if RX seems like I had better go lighter etc.
But you are so right, you simply have to put pride aside – went to light? you know for next time and can learn from it, went too heavy? Potentially broken athlete!
Jen @ Chase the Red Grape recently posted…CrossFit – Shattered!
Sometimes I think viewing it as “light” is a detrimental thing. Light is relative. What might be light to me could be heavy for you. Of course, I would use pounds and you kgs so my numbers will always be higher.
I remember the first time I fully understood that you can shortchange yourself scaling. It was one of the first times I did “Diane”.. I was newer to Crossfit and could deadlift the Diane weight, but knew for reps it was way too many. So I scaled to 85# (from 155#). I was done so quickly that I saw all the elite athletes were taking much longer.. so I KNEW that it was a much too light of a weight of relatively speaking I was faster than them.
But then I did it RX once and took twice as long as everyone…
jennifer recently posted…On Motivation
It takes a while to know your body and ability and be able to know where that sweet spot is for scaling. I love when deadlifts come up bc I can 99% of the time to that Rx or I’ll at least be too proud to scale it haha.
I’m really bad about scaling things I don’t like even if I could do them Rx. Wall balls are probably my best example of that. I scale wall balls from 14# to 10# nearly every WOD but can do 14# perfectly fine. I just really don’t enjoy them so I am lazy about it. Whereas I love anything with a barbell, so I put on as much weight as the coaches will let me!
Some days you just need a rest from your prime abilities… But make sure you do usually push yourself to an optimal workout… Even if it hurts and sucks at the time!
Funny, I just did a podcast for another website (beingjamesbond.com) specifically on Crossfit and scaling.
When I did my Level 1 Trainer certification, they SPECIFICALLY explained HOW to scale. It was a huge wake-up call to me.
When you do a move, it has 3 SPECIFIC builds. (1) you need to be able to do the move exactly right THEN (2) you need to be able to do the move exactly right consecutively and ONLY THEN (3) do you add intensity.
If you’re scaling so that you can do (1) (e.g., you can’t do a full depth squat, so you’re squatting to a box), then you need to know what your 1-2-3 is for that scaled movement.
And here’s the deal.
EVERY WOD is designed such that it’s supposed to be a % of either your 1RM, 3RM, 5RM, etc. So to scale the way you’re taught in Level 1, you need to find that out.
I recently was in a competition, and there was Rx, Scaled, and “Even Lower than Scaled.” But if you were in ELtS (like I was), you had to go to the box beforehand, because you WERE going to do the Scaled workout – just scaled.
That meant that there was a “Rx” (“prescription”) for “how long it should take you” IF you were doing it Rx. As an example, there were toes to bar in one of the Rx WODs. So the designer of the competition said “that should take about 30 seconds, Rx.” So then she scaled it (to knees up) such that IT should take the scaler about 30 seconds. (That meant that 5 toes to bar became I want to say like 12 knees up). Then when ~I~ did it, she TIMED how long it took me to do the 12 knees up. 30 seconds – good, that was my scale.
When it came to pushups, however, I can’t remember what the Rx were doing, but the Scale was regular pushups (I think they were doing handstand pushups point of fact). The Rx were supposed to do the handstand pushups in a set amount of time. So the Scaled was to do regular pushups in that time. I couldn’t do it. So I did banded pushups. And she timed me and timed me, changing out the band, until I could do the pushups in that time. And that was my scale of the scale.
This is how Crossfit is designed. In our class, one of the trainers likened it to golf, which I think is a good analogy. In golf, you have a handicap. If you happen to have a super high handicap (oh, say, 42, like mine), if you were to pay a pro golfer, who has a zero, you get to subtract your handicap from your score. So if you and the pro go around the course and she gets 100 and you get 141, you win, because 141 less 42 is 99.
This is how scaling is SUPPOSED to be done. Crossfit is about MEASURING everything. So when you come in to the WOD, and you see whatever the workout is, Greg Glassman feels that what you then immediately do is go to the coach, and say “what percentage of my 1RM is that lift supposed to be?” (That’s why if you are a scaler, you need to come in EARLY.) Then you take a calculator and you work it out.
Yesterday, I had 2 moves that were supposed to be 60% of my 3RM. That meant that I was doing one move with 12k, and the other move I couldn’t even GO low enough (I couldn’t make the weight with what we have in the box), so I opted to go “even lower” and did it with a PVC pipe.
Maybe your “part 2” is going to discuss this, but this is Greg Glassman’s view on scaling, and how we learned in Level 1 Training. It was an IMMENSE eye-opener for me, and makes me “scale scientifically,” and, of course, LOG EVERYTHING. Because as you improve, then perhaps the next time you “test to see” whether those banded pushups are taking 30 seconds, well, maybe you can do them in 20 seconds with the band you were on. And then it’s time to use a lighter band.
S
This happened the other day. WOD was 22 Power Cleans, 22 Front Squats, 22 KB Thrusters, 22 Min AMRAP (birthday WOD, guess her age 🙂 ). The Rx was above my 1 rep so scaled it but went way too far and ended up completing multiple rounds when the goal was 1/1.5. It was that fine line between “I can’t do that” vs. “Crap, too easy”.
That being said, without being unsafe, I usually like to focus more on my exertion than the time or weight. If I chose to scale too much, I just push myself harder; if the weight is more than I’m used to, I push to keep moving as best I can, time-be-damned. That way no matter what weight I’m using, I’m getting the most out of it and next time a particular movement shows up I know that I can move up. Maybe even to Rx.
22??? Haha. You make a great point Dave. Sometimes I wonder if something like a heart rate monitor would help scalers get to that zone with heavier or lighter weights… Getting to the same level of intensity would equate to a similar benefit from the workout!
Chris, I don’t CrossFit, but I do do pull ups and never thought of how much damage could happen on the descent! My humble opinion, I think “to Scale or not to scale” applies to just about every strength training workout … right?
Exactly right! If you’re following any sort of thought out program (which you should be) then scaling to remove injury while still getting an intense effective workout is key!
Very good topic!! Usually the deciding factors for me are 1) I can’t lift the rx weight or 2) I don’t have that skill so it’s a pretty easy decision!! It takes a while to learn your limits and find the balance between not pushing yourself hard enough vs overdoing it and sacrificing form…
Exactly! Gotta know your limits but also try to push that line safely in the name of improvement.
I’m kind of in the Arman camp where I have no idea what you’re talking about. You did throw in Shakespeare though so it works for me. I also figure the general idea was about pushing yourself outside your comfort zone when you exercise, whether that be scaling back to account for form or scaling forward to account for enflamed balls. Does that sum it up about right? 😉
Well I remedied that with my post today! Booyah. And yes, you nailed the cliff notes version expertly. You’re so succinct.