Your training program should challenge you to approach new movements, time domains, and intensity levels. Exposure to new stimuli is how you improve! But as you do this you will find that it isn’t easy to approach new skills. And it’s even harder to know how to modify a workout to improve the skill. You will open the program to find Toes to Bar, Muscle-Ups, Squat Snatches, Push-ups, and many other challenging movements. We can do our best to give an option or substitution, but as the athlete, you need to have agency over your own progress.

So let’s break down how to scale a workout and movements to get the most out of your training!

01/ Identify the Problem Area(s)

Sometimes, this is obvious: Ring Muscle Ups come up, and you know you’ve never done one, but the problem areas could be the number of reps you need to do, the total time the workout will take, or the other movements in the workout.

Let’s take a look at this workout from HWPO FLAGSHIP 2.0:

AMRAP 15
50 Double Unders
15 Wall Balls 20/14
50ft Handstand Walk

The handstand walk and double unders are the two biggest issues for most athletes. These movements, paired with wall balls, also create high levels of shoulder fatigue that will cause interference. Interference will make all these movements harder, and if you can’t do the individual skills alone, you shouldn’t do them with this level of interference. Some athletes may also need to adjust the total time, depending on their fitness level.

02/ Practice

You won’t miraculously string together 50 double unders or walk 50 feet on your hands when you are exhausted in the middle of a metcon. You need to develop the neurological (skill) components of these movements in practice, under low fatigue. The warm-up is a great place to work on this!

As you finish your written warm-up, take some time (5-10 minutes) to specifically work on the double under and its components (high jump, fast wrists, timing), as well as the handstand walk and its components (handstand balance, core control, straight arm strength).

Working on these movements and their components in isolation will make them more efficient, saving you energy when adding them into a metcon.

03/ Substitute the Missing Piece

In the workout, we need to find a scaling option that allows you to get the intended stimulus of the workout while still developing the capacity in and muscular component of the skill. 

Let’s say you’re missing the balance and core control required to handstand walk in free space. A great scaling option that you can use to work on being upside down and moving your hands is doing a 3-5 walk to the walls. Start a few inches from the wall, kick up to a handstand, find the wall with your feet, and walk your hands into the wall. You can take a step back after each successful walk.

For double unders, doing 50 high jumping single unders can help develop the aerobic and bounding requirements of a double under without the coordination and timing requirement.

04/ Keep It Varied

Variance is a key principle in skill development. There are so many different components that make up every movement, and scaling tends to eliminate some of these factors to allow you to work on one component of the movement. High jumping single unders will never turn into double unders if you don’t mix in the coordination component in both practice and metcons.

My go-to rule is never to use the same scaling option three times in a row. This allows you to improve at that particular component of the skill but not become comfortable completely replacing a skill with a scale.

Mix it up often and play with different scaling options, even after you can do the RX movement itself! Remember when wall walks turned into an RX movement in the 2021 CrossFit Open?

05/ Stop Before You Get Frustrated

Double unders are the perfect example of a skill that sparks instant rage upon failure. Not only do you fail, but you get whipped in the process.

If you are working on double unders and start feeling yourself turn red, holding your breath, and tightening your grip, STOP! You won’t progress more after you throw your rope across the gym. So save the tantrum and switch up the movement before things get ugly. Get a good workout in, and don’t let one movement ruin your day!

Here is what we might turn that workout into

AMRAP 15
50 High Jumping Single Unders or 10 Single-Single-Double Under Attempts
15 Wall Balls 20/14 or 14/10
3-5 Walks to Wall or 50ft Bear Crawl

This will still be a high-intensity workout that helps you develop the skills you are missing with much less risk of injury or burnout upon failure. 

At the end of the day, the goal of training is to get better, and scaling is a tool to get there.