All scaling is not equal.

When a client is in the middle of a workout, rarely are they happy about regressing an exercise to make it safer or to better achieve the stimulus for that day.

It's usually not fun to take weight off the bar, switch from a barbell to dumbbells, or come off the pull up bar to perform ring rows.

But one of the things that I've learned as a coach is its not the modification that's being delivered that matters, its how and why its delivered that makes it valuable or not.

It's the difference between customizing a workout and scaling a workout.

Customizing workouts = making valuable personalized modifications before class or prior to a workout based on individualized knowledge about the client's injury history, recent training, and goals.

Scaling workouts = reactive modifications done during a workout to make an exercise more appropriate or safer for an individual.

When we scale reactively, it can make us feel like we are at odds with our clients, instead of working towards a common goal.

It turns one of the biggest values we can provide as coaches, custom modifications, into something that actually feels like a takeaway from the client's perspective.

In today's episode we discuss the difference between proactive and reactive scaling, and all of the various attributes that we should take into consideration when determining whether to scale a client or not.