Honest truth - no one is excited about saying they’re doing a “Scaled” division at a comp and you will sell more tickets if you call your divisions anything except for Rx + Scaled.

I get it…in classes we have an Rx version of the daily workout and if someone has to modify some aspect of it we typically say the workout was modified or “scaled”. It might be subbing rowing instead of running, or maybe they did single-unders instead of double-unders, or maybe they used a lighter barbell than the workout called for. It’s changing an aspect or movement standard to better suit the needs of a given individual.

In a comp we have divisions, which is an important differentiation.

How many 45’s do you have? How many 35’s? How many 50 lb dumbbells? How many 20 lb med-balls? How many 45 lb barbells?

An equipment audit is something that I believe every gym should do regardless of whether or not you’re trying to plan a comp. It’s the process of itemizing all of your equipment into a spreadsheet so that when you need the information it’s readily available.

I was recently contacted by Nick + Marshall of CrossFit Override, they’re a local affiliate who we first met at one of our annual Battle for the Bell comps and they were looking to plan their first comp.

Since the previous events I’ve planned have all happened and are things of the past I wanted to take this opportunity of working with them to treat their gym and event as a case study to document and share the process.

Step 1: Creating Base Sheets…

One of the best practices that can be done to help make sure your comp runs as smoothly as possible is setting up event mock-ups.

When it comes to competitions this is the process of setting up your workouts after you’ve programmed them. You’ll want to do this for each event and if you have different equipment being used in different divisions then you’ll want to do this for those as well.

If there is one thing that can make or break a comp it’s Judges.

It’s very often a thankless job and is something we really only hear about when something has gone wrong.

“The Judge never told me those were no reps.”
“The Judge marked our score incorrectly.”
“The Judge got in our way.”

While things happening is inevitable there are two things that we can do from an event planning perspective to help make the Judges life as simple as possible.

For any type of Functional Fitness or CrossFit type competition there are two primary layout configuration options that we can play with.

1)Lanes
2) Grids

The goal with either option is to create a boundary that provides a safe and dedicated space for the athlete(s), and Judge. The Judges are as much a part of the workout as the equipment is and how they’re going to move around the space needs to be considered.

Before we get to the fun stuff of designing and planning workouts we need to know what we’re working with. To do this we first need to create a base sheet to work off of.

A base sheet is a technical drawing that is created by measuring your gym (or space) and then converting the measurements into a scaled drawing.

Your Landlord may already have Architectural drawings of your space. If they do and you can obtain a copy of this then we have a great starting point.

For the purpose of planning events and competitions there are some basic terms that need to be understood.

The first is “scale” - which has a few meanings depending on how it gets used...kind of like their / there / they’re but the spelling doesn’t change.

Sadly it doesn’t mean growing your competition from a 10 person throwdown to a 1,000 person stadium event.

Very simply - drafting is the intersection between drawing and math. It is also known as technical drawing.

It allows us to create drawings that are grounded in reality that can be used for analysis, planning, measuring, and working through conceptual ideas.

In order to create a drafted drawing we need to know two things.