When CrossFit was created, its tag line was, “Forging Elite Fitness.” For early adopters, this is what it was all about. “Elite” made us feel like we were doing something no one else could do. The daily workouts on the main site of CrossFit were designed to be hard and intimidating. We would slog our way through them doing our best not to die.
However, as CrossFit become more popular, the “Elite” status started to wear away. Today, it is almost impossible to find the original tag line on CrossFit’s site. Why? Because we all realized that CrossFit will benefit everyone. You don’t have to be someone elite. Everyone has individual goals. CrossFit’s universal scalability is perfect for helping meet those goals. Thus, CrossFit became more approachable regardless of fitness level or ability.
General vs. Individual
These days, it is rare to see someone performing a CrossFit workout as written. This is especially true at Industrial Athletics. Why? Because workout programmers write workouts for “general physical preparedness.” The keyword there is “general.” As soon as you generalize anything, you take away its individual qualities. Therefore, you should be modifying the written workout to focus on your goals, not simply completing the workout as written on the whiteboard.
Almost everyone’s fitness goals fall within one of four categories: lose weight, gain muscle, sports performance, or longevity. From there, your goals becomes specific to you. Generally, your goal may fall into the category of lose weight. However, how much you want to lose is individual to you. Maybe your goal is to increase your cardiovascular capacity so you can ride your bike longer. That’s a sports performance goal that is specific to your goal of riding your bike.
Modify for Your Goals
With this in mind, you can start to modify workouts to better fit your goal. If your goal is to increase your cardio, you may place more emphasis on the running portion of the workout. If your goal is to get more pullups, you may modify a workout to include more pullups and less squats.
At the end of the day, you have your goals and you should be working out to achieve those goals. Completing a workout written for general fitness will give you general results. Instead, look at the workout as a framework. Modify the framework for you.
