As First City CrossFit’s Head of Programming I wanted to touch base with all of our athletes about a few things that I have concern with regarding upscaling and time caps. I have had some athletes mention to me that they upscaled workouts to make them harder or heavier. I have also had athletes ask me why I put time caps on certain workouts. I want to address the former first as I think it is most important. I work pretty hard putting programming together to have a good mix of modalities, variance of movement and volume, duration and loading. The programming is not random. I strive to program good CrossFit workouts with well thought out variance across all the days of the week. Please continue to show up, follow and trust the programming and you will see dramatic results in the long run. If you think you need to upscale a workout to make it harder you need to simply ask yourself, “Why?” If athletes you look at a WOD and think you need to make it harder by adding weight or making a movement more advanced then you aren’t going to get the intended intensity out of the workout. I have encouraged all FCCF coaches to tell you to MOVE YOUR BUTT FASTER to make it harder. I would never want to upscale on Fight Gone Bad. Would you? Specifically regrading GHD sit ups. It’s very rare that you will ever see me, or anyone for that matter, program GHD sit ups in a metcon. It is dangerous and not effective. If you want to do GHD sit-ups you need to be coached on doing them correctly and on your own time, not in a WOD. ASK YOUR COACH FIRST!!!
From Greg Glassman – “We also caution against unbridled bouts on the GHD for newcomers to avoid the Matt Weaver cantaloupe syndrome described above. This is a potent exercise and it has sidelined dozens of strong, strong, athletes for a few days to a week.” Strong, strong to me means Games level competitors. Check out this article from The CrossFit Journal which explains the cantaloupe syndrome. Remember, WE are the subject matter experts and we always out athletes best interest in mind.
http://www.crossfit.com/journal/library/38_05_GluteHam_SU.pdf
Ok, onto the latter. Why do we have time caps? Again, I put a lot thought and careful planning into the programming to ensure that you are completing work across all the nine essential CF movements as well as other kettle-bell, gymnastics and mono-structural endurance work to ensure that the program is in fact constantly varied and not just a random mess of crap. In doing so I am also looking at the different energy systems. Every WOD is programmed with an end time in mind. Once that time is surpassed it becomes a different workout than it was originally designed for and the intensity level diminishes completely. Fran is designed to be completed in under 10 minutes for sure and ideally under 5. It is a sprint! When the workout exceeds that time frame that the workout is no longer a sprint and becomes something totally different. While there is something to be said for trying to “gut out” a WOD, nine times out of ten there should be a time cap. Good coaches will scale all of the workouts well enough that all of the athletes are competing the intended work in the intended amount of time and all of the athletes in a class should be finishing within a minute or two of each other. When a time is set you know it will be difficult to complete so you will typically end up pushing harder to complete the work. The time cap creates a more competitive environment for all the athletes of every level, and keeps the intensity of the WOD up where it should be as well as maintaining the integrity of the program that has been so painstakingly put together. The advantages of using a time cap for task priority WOD’s greatly outweighs the disadvantages and can be used as one more tool to continue success for all of us.
As always, if you have any questions or feedback, please reach out.