There is a very high likelihood that you’re scaling WODs incorrectly. I started doing functional fitness way back in 2007 and I can tell you in all those years I’ve seen athletes, and coaches, do this wrong more often than I’ve seen them do it right. This article is meant to be an easy guide to correctly scaling workouts so you are receiving the maximum benefit from it. Keep reading for more.
Who Should Scale a WOD or Metcon?
The first thing we need to think about is why are we even scaling the WOD? The most common answer is that the athlete doesn’t have the required capacity or technique to complete the WOD as prescribed. If you can’t do muscle ups, then by default you will have to do another movement. This is not the complete picture however.
It’s my opinion that every athlete, from the newest newbie to the guys and gals winning the CF games, need to scale at some point in most training cycles. All too often scaling is seen as wimping out, or some sort of admission that an athlete isn’t good enough. That attitude misses the point of scaling entirely.
A beginner might scale for technique or because the WOD is too hard. An advanced trainee will scale for completely different reasons. I will give you an example why an advanced athlete, who can perform any movement RX, still needs to scale.
Let’s say that our awesome athlete is about halfway through a muscle building program, and they find that their legs are still completely sore from a workout a few days ago. They are supposed to be doing front squats today, but they can barely squat to full depth without wincing. Do you think they’ll have a good workout if they go ahead and complete that front squat workout? The answer is no. It’s likely to be an utter waste of time, that will further stall their progress. They need to modify the session or delay it when their legs are recovered!
Check out this list of reasons to scale a WOD. It’s important to note that this is not an exhaustive list, but it does include some reasons to scale that most athletes and coaches never consider.
Top 5 Reasons to Scale a WOD
- Lack of safe technique
- Lack of exercise capacity
- Insufficient muscle group recovery
- Over developed capacity
- Injury
It’s ok if some of these key points don’t make sense to you. I will go over them. Before I do that you need to keep in mind that the whole point of scaling is to make sure that every athlete receives the intended stimulus of the workout. Scaling isn’t a failure, or a way to game the system.
Understanding the Intent of the WOD
This is by far the least understood portion of scaling. It is something that I always try to explain to my athletes, whether in person, or in my programs. You have to know why you are doing something to know how and when you should modify it. I use a simple four step process to figure out the point of any WOD, and modify it correctly.
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WOD Time Domain
This is the first area I look at. This is extremely important as the time domain, or total length of the WOD, is what determines the metabolic impact it has on your body. It’s obvious that a 20 min WOD will feel much different than a short 5 minute burner.
The best way to examine this is to understand that most WODs are written for a top level athlete, who can complete it as written. If it would take them 5 minutes to finish then it is meant to be a highly anaerobic WOD, with tremendous power output. If they would take 10 or more minutes it is less anaerobic and lower in overall power output.
The goal is to scale or modify your WOD in such a way that you use the same combination of energy systems. This, in turn, will allow you to finish your version of the WOD around the same time. While a Games level athlete might finish more work in the same time, the WOD will feel just as hard to you.
Weight Intensity Relative to 1RM
Next you should look the weight of any lifts in the WOD. Most metcons and WODs use lighter weights that are meant to be cycled quickly, but this isn’t always true. If a WOD is written with a 225 deadlift for males we need to see how heavy, relative to one rep max, this weight is for a top level Rx athlete.
Most top athletes will be deadlifting between 400-500 pounds. This makes 225 pounds roughly 50% of this ideal athlete’s one rep max. If your max deadlift is 315, and you are lifting 225 pounds you will go much, much slower than this workout intends. You would be better served using 185 pounds. This would allow you to maintain the same time domain and over all feel that we spoke about above.
How to Scale WODs and Metcons Video
WOD Skill Requirement
There’s no getting around it. Some WODs have a high skill requirement. Movements like snatches, muscle ups, and handstand push ups can require a lot of mastery before they can safely be used in a WOD. I do not let athletes move on to advanced movements until they have demonstrated safe technique first. This is important, not just for safety, but for overall performance as well.
Let’s say I have an athlete than can get 2-5 muscle ups on a good day, but they have very bad technique. Today’s WOD is 30 muscle ups for time. While they may want to give it a go Rx, and they may actually achieve more reps than they have previously, this wouldn’t be a smart move.
When you add the intensity of a WOD to a high skill movement that an athlete is not confidant with, you end up with injuries. The athlete would be much better off performing 30 chest to bar pull ups and working on specific muscle up drills at a later date. You don’t suddenly get better in WODs, you fall to the level of your worst reps.
Substitute Like Movements
This is fairly common sense, but it does need to be said. When you decide to scale, you must substitute the most similar movement pattern that you can. For example, a power clean is a lot closer to a full squat clean than a deadlift would be. Similarly, a standing barbell strict press would be closer to a handstand push up than a regularly push up would be.
Try to use the same muscle groups in the same planes of motion. You don’t always have to do this, but you’ll find it’s much easier to get the same results if the movements are similar to one another. Now that we know how to scale let’s look at some uncommon reasons to scale.
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Unconventional Reasons to Scale a WOD
Going back to our list above, you’ll see that there are certainly some reasons we might wish to scale that have nothing to do with being a new athlete. We might scale advanced athletes give the right circumstances. Remember the goal is to achieve the correct feel and metabolic stimulus for the athlete, not blindly do what’s written on the whiteboard!
Insufficient Recovery
This is something I find myself doing a lot when I write a new program for you all. I often test several cycles of the program, and occasionally I bite off more than I can chew. Somehow it’s always easier to write a WOD down than actually do it!
If a workout calls for a movement in which those muscle groups are very sore, I generally don’t do it. There is little reason to train very sore muscles, until they are recovered. Your muscles are sore because your body is telling you to rest them. If you train through this often enough you will stunt your performance, and possibly injure yourself.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t do anything that day. I might pick a less challenging variation of the movement, or more commonly, I might swap an entire day in that cycle. If my legs are sore, I can still bench press after all!
Overdeveloped Capacity
This is less commonly seen, but I do regularly scale for this reason. A good example of this would be when you have a specialist walk into the gym and the workout calls for the thing they specialize in. If you have a marathon runner in a class and the WOD has 800m runs and a light deadlift, I might actually increase the amount of reps or load on the deadlift, provided they are safe.
They have an over developed capacity to run, and are likely not as good at lifting. I’ve adjusted the WOD so that the overall difficulty is about the same as compared to a traditional functional fitness only athlete. I do not recommend you do this for every WOD, but it does allow you to work on an athlete’s weaknesses.
Injury
If you train hard you will experience injury. The vast majority of these injuries are minor aches and pains, that recover well with time. These relatively minor injuries, and even major problems requiring surgery, require smart scaling.
Obviously, you should listen to your medical doctor and physical therapist’s advice on returning to the gym. Once you are cleared to come back, it’s going to require coaches and athletes pick the best movements they can to maintain as much fitness as possible. Let me illustrate what I mean.
A few years back I injured one of my knees, and couldn’t bend it more than 45 degrees for weeks. I was unable to squat and do many other lifts, but I still could do a fair amount of work in the gym. I could do almost all upper body lifts, and I could still use a rower without bending my knee much. I also found that I could perform stiff leg deadlifts pretty well. As a result after about two months I had reasonable range of motion again and I hadn’t lost any appreciable fitness once I familiarized my body with squatting again.
Final Thoughts
We’ve gone through a lot of information. By now you might be feeling a little over whelmed. Try not to worry about the minutia of scaling exactly correctly. This guide will give you a frame work to get very close to the best workout for you on a given day. That is what you need.
Don’t stress about whether you should do push jerks, or push press, or which pull up variation you should do. Remember your body doesn’t know that muscle ups were written on the whiteboard. It only knows how hard and consistently you work over the long hall. Now get out there and get training!
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