Standards

Hey CFDers! I wanted to take a moment and talk about standards for movement. Phil and I usually go over standards for movement pre workout. They will be a given range of motion for each movement. Some athletes will be at full ROM and some will have modifications. This is fine. It’s called scaling and it’s how we keep everything competitive over varying fitness levels.

When we assign standards, we expect you as an athlete to uphold them. We can stand over you and constantly no rep you and for some of you, we have. Once we get you to the range of motion though, it’s YOUR job to keep it! You are only cheating yourself by cutting the corners. 

Think of it this way: if every rep is to standards, NO ONE can ever take that away from you. There will never be an asterisk by your name. Never a “yeah,but…” when recounting your epic score. 

Here’s another example for you. Everyone here speeds at some point. We’ve all pushed that boundary a little, maybe set the cruise at 7 over betting on the cops to let you slide on that one. Until you get the one officer that decides that 7 over is still over. You get a ticket. Because you were wrong. You may get mad at the officer, but it’s still your fault. Likewise, don’t get butt hurt when we call you on a movement. We are not babysitters. At some point you need to hold yourself accountable. You know you’re shorting the movement, accept the correction, move on and be a better athlete for it.

All of this ties in with how we scale. Everyone always wants more weight, go bigger, whatever. Our priority is range of motion first, speed second and strength third. Sometimes we will let you bite off a little more weight. Don’t cut your range as a result. And don’t get upset when we bump your weight back down. We have your best interest at heart and want to see big range of motion fast before we see a ton of weight on the bar. You will always get stronger, but going back to rework movements for ROM sucks!

The bottom line is we want everyone here to succeed and be the best athlete they can be. In order to do this, standards must be met. When it comes down to it, you’re only cheating yourself. Hope this helps! See everyone at the gym…

Coach Mike