Scaling Is Not An Apology

Scaling is an adjustment of the workout to your individual needs.

Scaling is not an apology or an excuse. And it's not some bullshit way to talk down to yourself or anybody else.

The ubiquitous use of the term scaled is kind of unfortunate in our fitness world because it's an ill-fitting term, but it's too late now to go back and change the word.

If I could, I'd call it something more apt like "tailored" because everybody understands that clothing off the rack doesn't always fit right, so you go to the tailor and get it fitted to your body.

What good scaling does is tailor the workout to you.

But in our fitness world, as we increasingly geek over data, we seek to find more ways to make everything uniform so that we can measure who is the fittest or the fastest or the strongest or the best.  

So we make one super-human standard and everyone else has to adjust off that standard. I get it. Makes sense. I used to be into that, but most of the time now I really don't care for dick-measuring contests, but that's just me.

See, I'm just me and I do my thing.

Do I want to beat the person next to me in the workout? Oh hell yeah, sometimes I do. And sometimes I don't give a flying frisbee. Sometimes I just want to still be breathing at the end of the workout. A little stronger, a little smarter, a little sexier, right?

But my point here is that you should never feel bad because you scaled the workout. Never.

Nor should you ever make anybody else feel small for scaling. It's just a workout. There will be another one tomorrow. If you're smart, you'll scale that one to your abilities too.

And when the coach asks what you did, tell the truth and hold your head high.

Don't lower your eyes or shrug your shoulders or mumble something about "not doing it RX."

Scaling is not an apology, so don't talk like it is.

You've offended no one and you have nothing to apologize for.

Stop saying "sorry" in this life when you have nothing to be sorry for.

You were here. You did the work as hard as you wanted or needed to on this day. And life went on. Go out and kick ass.