I learned about this term JOMO (the joy of missing out) from a friend who was explaining how so many people live in this fear of missing out, that they go along with the crowd just to avoid feeling left behind. It’s so pervasive in our society and we can see it when new electronics come out or new “fitness/health challenges” pop up on our social media. It’s even something that I’ve seen in the gym. I know I’ve fallen into the trap myself where you don’t want to be the only person not doing the work out at Rx, even though you just don’t think you are up to it. It’s a mind trap for sure.
Let me stop right here and insert this caveat. If you go into a work and attempt to do it as prescribed (Rx) and you don’t have the skills or strength to do it and achieve the proper stimulus, we have a whole different conversation for you over on the post Scaling is not Failing. What I’m talking about is having the ability to do a workout at Rx, but making the choice to not to do so when you’re just not feeling it.
That’s why I love the concept of B+ work from my friend Shirin of Wholehearted Coaching and it really encompasses the idea that we don’t have to be at 100% every single day. We all want to do well and succeed, especially in the gym. Let’s face it, PRs are awesome. But PRs don’t happen every day. And here’s why. 99% of us are training for life, not for the sport of CrossFit. We don’t have the pressure of being the best in the sport, we don’t have brands to promote, sponsors to work with or worldwide rankings to worry about. We just want to be able to keep moving and not need a cane when we’re 65, right?
This is when B+ work/training comes into play. Think about it. Most workouts only require you to go at 75-85% of your max capacity and even that can leave you sprawled on the floor. The goal with training should be to achieve the intended stimulus of the workout. Translation: move your body. That’s it. What’s that look like?
Recently, our gym programmed a workout that was Karen (150 wall balls) directly into Grace (30 clean and jerks) and any time you dropped the ball or the barbell you had to run 200 meters or do 10 burpees. The standard wall ball weight is 20#/14# and for Grace the barbell is normally (135#/95#). Now, we’ve been on quarantine and many of us are still working out from home. So the home version was light thrusters instead of wall balls and light clean and jerks since most people don’t even have a barbell. I went with a 20# dumbbell for thrusters and a 45# barbell for the clean and jerks. The me of 2016 would have been overly concerned with setting a new PR for both portions. But 2020 me was only really concerned with moving my body safely and efficiently.
Because of injury and quarantine, I’ve been scaling all my workouts. And its totally ok. I feel plenty of the benefits, I feel like I’m doing my best to achieve the stimulus and because my scales are different than other people’s, I’m truly running my own race. It’s so freeing.
If you’re someone who feels like you have to go full send on an Rx workout everyday, I challenge you to scale your workout, by movements or reps and then work to achieve the same stimulus. Believe me, you will find that training this way will allow you to get the most benefit from your workouts.
