In CrossFit, intensity is a cornerstone of what drives progress. It’s what propels athletes toward better health and increased abilities. However, high intensity is often misunderstood or seen as controversial because of the perception that it encourages athletes to push themselves too far. This is where understanding the principle of relative intensity comes into play.
Part of what we strive for in our workouts is to program the bulk of our sessions with the goal of performing them at high-intensity levels relative to your individual capacity, both physically and psychologically. This means that intensity isn’t about pushing beyond safe or sustainable limits—it’s about scaling and adapting the workout to suit where each athlete is on their fitness journey.
Defending the concept of high intensity starts with recognizing that it’s not a “one size fits all” approach. Each person’s capacity for intensity is unique and varies from day to day. For a beginner, intensity might be a scaled version of a workout that includes lighter weights and slower pacing. For a seasoned athlete, it could involve pushing heavy loads or moving through complex movements at a higher rate. The beauty of CrossFit is that both athletes—regardless of experience or fitness level—are encouraged to challenge themselves within their own limits. This is way for every workout we have scaling options, and ask athletes what their goals are for that day.
Workouts at Relative Intensity
Relative intensity means the athlete’s effort is scaled to what their body can handle while still achieving maximum benefits. This is where our coaches come in—helping athletes adjust their workouts to align with their current fitness level, protecting against injury, and ensuring long-term progress.
High-intensity workouts have proven to be effective for improving various aspects of fitness, including cardiovascular endurance, strength, power, and metabolic conditioning. Numerous studies support that high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which is central to CrossFit, can deliver significant health improvements, such as increased muscle endurance and fat loss, when compared to lower-intensity or more steady-state approaches.
What makes CrossFit’s version of intensity different is the emphasis on quality of movement and the programming structure. Rather than merely pushing for exhaustion, CrossFit promotes safe, functional movements performed with the intensity that matches your current capacity. When done correctly, this builds resilience, promotes overall fitness, and can improve mental toughness as well.
High-intensity CrossFit workouts are effective, but they must be personalized. By focusing on relative intensity, CrossFit encourages people to find their edge—challenging themselves, but always within their own ability to safely execute the workout. This principle helps ensure that athletes improve their fitness while minimizing the risk of injury.
If you want to give CrossFit a try, reach out to a coach today using this LINK. If you are a member and want suggestion on how to adjust workouts so they are the most effective for you, talk to a coach today or schedule a goal session with Coach Emily
“The goal is to increase fitness, which we define as work capacity across broad time and modal domains, with the long-term approach being that we want to build our fitness levels as high as possible and sustain it for as long as possible so we have great capacity throughout all of the years of our lives. This is different from any goal that I had before. CrossFit wasn’t just a strength program or just an endurance program — it’s a “greedy” program that wants capacity everywhere! If you are challenged to lift something heavy, you should be able to do it. If you are challenged to hit up a 10K run, you have the capacity to do it.
These concepts were new to me but also made complete sense to me. As an added benefit, when we garner improvements across such a broad range of performance markers, our health markers tend to follow along with better body composition, better blood work, improved bone density, etc. I realized that fitness and health were not two different things but were closely related and largely dependent upon each other. Once I understood this goal, I started to understand how the workouts I was doing through dot-com made sense.” -Eric O’Connor-
Eric O’Connor is a Content Developer and Seminar Staff Flowmaster for CrossFit’s Education Department and the co-creator of the former CrossFit Competitor’s Course. He has led more than 400 seminars and has over a decade of experience coaching at an affiliate. He is a Certified CrossFit Coach (CF-L4), a former Division 1 collegiate wrestler, and a former CrossFit Games athlete. Read his full article about programming HERE