Ask any Coach in our gym and hands down the most common question to be asked by a member is “How do we scale this workout for me?”

To go along with the most common, it’s also at the top of the list for most important when it comes to making sure each member gets the most out of each class. Scale it too lightly and you’re done ahead of everyone else, thinking you should have had added a few more reps each round or a few more pounds on the barbell. Not enough scaling can lead to finding yourself behind everyone else, missing reps you know you shouldn’t, working harder than you thought you should be. If you’re ending up on either side of this spectrum very often, we are here to help!

Basically, there are three ways to scale anything we do in the gym. The first would be SCALING THE ACTUAL MOVEMENT. The classic benchmark workout Diane calls for a large amount of handstand push-ups to be done in a relatively short amount of time. You’ve barely been able to kick up into a handstand since you started and the thought of being upside down is still scary. You’ve made really good progress with your push-ups lately and getting through those is no problem. The coach did walk the class through some pike push-ups on a box during the warm-up….yep, that’s it!

The second way to scale a workout is to SCALE THE WEIGHT you’ll be moving. The same workout mentioned above calls for 45 deadlifts at 225#, but you just PR’d your deadlift last week at 255#. It’s an easy and obvious thing to say the weight should be scaled, but the hard question is how much? Most likely the coach has given the class some type of rep scheme or percentage to follow, but if not, maybe going to ask another member who has completed the workout before or has more experience would be a good thing. There’s always someone willing to lend a helping hand or give some direction.

The last way to look at scaling is to CHANGE THE REPS. While it sometimes might seem the simplest, in most instances it’s the most important and the key to making the workout your own. At times, when scaling movements or weight we need to increase the reps because range of motion is shorter or the effort to complete the same reps is less. Other times, we might decrease the rep scheme because the movement takes longer or you’re doing a higher percentage of weight than originally prescribed. Other times, the rep scheme might be just right and it’s only the movements or weight that need to be changed.

Reading through all this, it might feel like a lot or very overwhelming and after all it’s only a workout! That’s why we have coaches in the gym, to help us make progress not only in the quality of our movements and the skills that we progress through, but also doing the best we can to scale workouts to preserve the intended intensity originally designed in the workout. Much like a deadlift, it will take some time to get used to and we won’t do it perfectly every time, but it’s something we will continue to make progress on until it’s just an after-thought within the time you’re at the gym!