What Happens When You Can't Finish the Workout

We've all been there, the clock running out with everyone else finished, and you still going.

Almost every session has a time cap — a hard stop, set when the workout was written. If the cap is 12 minutes, everybody stops at 12 minutes. Your score is the work you completed, which is a perfectly good score, and the coach writes it down the same way they write down everybody else's.

More importantly though, the bigger safeguard sits earlier than that. Scaling is a decision made before the clock starts. The coach looks at the workout, looks at you, and helps you pick the version that lands you inside the cap — a scaled load, fewer reps, a different movement, a shorter distance. Same purpose, same muscles, same energy system, the right pace for you. Everybody in the room is doing a version of it. On any given morning, most of the class is on something other than what's written on the board.

It's worth knowing what the five minutes before a workout look like, because that's where all of this happens. The coach explains the workout, demonstrates each movement, and then ensures people have loads and versions that will allow them to get the right workout for them.

If you're new the coach will know. Our goal as coaches is to get everyone finishing the workout inside the cap.

Finishing inside the cap every week and getting stronger beats blowing up heroically once and never coming back. But if you do hit the cap still working — some days you will, everyone does — you stop, you write down what you did, and the next time you do the same session you have a number to beat. That's how progress gets measured here.

If that's what's been putting you off, it's worth fifteen minutes on the phone. Free, no obligation, no hard sell — Jeremy or Beth at crossfitchiltern.com. We'll build a plan around your life, not a generic template.