The Death of Rx
by Erik Castiglione

Another CrossFit coach published an article a few months ago called “Why is Your Gym Still Using Rx?” This coach is a specialist in inclusivity, and we’re going to take her advice.

Using “Rx” weights and movements in a workout is a recipe for disaster. It encourages athletes to “scale” their workouts, which leads to feelings of inadequacy. Plus, it’s not like we’re a community that celebrates the success of other people. Rather than celebrate an athlete’s journey who has worked hard to FINALLY be able to click the Rx button, we want to avoid any possibility that others may feel slighted. Don’t worry about your long-term goals, learning to embrace the process of working hard, or anything like that. Let’s just focus on the here and now.

Additionally, we can just assign percentages to everything that requires weight. We don’t need to consider variation in abilities between athletes. It doesn’t matter that strength-based athletes generally struggle to lift 80% and above for lots of reps, while endurance athletes tend to rep out 90% without a big problem. You played lineman in college? Great! You can handle 21-15-9 thrusters at 155 lbs while the former runner uses 65 lbs. We don’t need a ceiling for weights, nor do we need to focus on moving faster, at some point. Unless, of course, we’re talking about benchmarks.

When it comes to benchmark workouts that HQ has created, we will still use the Rx notation. Why? Because we didn’t create these workouts. And, we don’t really care about consistency in our program. We won’t prepare you for them in any way, shape, or form, we’ll just periodically throw them at you. But, you know, everyone will still feel included. No need to feel singled out anymore with individualized scalings.

While we’re at it, we’re getting rid of PR tracking and the shout-out board. Again, we want to include everyone, and we don’t want you to feel slighted if you don’t get a gold star in Wodify. It’s going to be a great culture shift for the gym, and we hope you enjoy it.[1]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] This entire article is sarcastic in tone. If you don’t pick up on that, I can’t help you.