CrossFit: How Much Intensity Is the Right Amount of Intensity?

I’ve been contemplating writing this article for some time, unsure of how it would be received. CrossFit athletes are renowned for their unwavering work ethic. We take pride in the intensity of our workouts and the remarkable results we achieve. Therefore, a discourse on reducing workout intensity may spark controversy. I anticipate differing opinions, and that’s perfectly fine. In fact, I welcome the debate. Our community is brimming with exceptionally fit, astute experts, and I eagerly await their insights on this topic.

Let me state my argument up front, and then I’ll explain my thought process. 

The high-intensity aspect of CrossFit does not mean every workout is done at 100% intensity. If you are doing CrossFit for long-term health and fitness and improved quality of life, you should not redline every day in the gym. 

Intensity and CrossFit

CrossFit is unique among fitness programs in that we define our terms. We were the first to produce a useful, measurable definition of fitness and health. Along the way, we clearly defined functional movements and provided decades of programming to demonstrate variance.  We also defined intensity. In CrossFit, intensity is identical to power output or how much work is accomplished per unit of time. In the gym, CrossFit athletes measure how long a workout takes or how much work is done in the time allocated to measure intensity. Assuming all external factors like range of motion, body weight, and workout setup are consistent, if you do more rounds of Cindy in 20 minutes or shave tenths of a second off your Fran time, your power output — or intensity — is higher. 

Intensity is one of the central tenets of the CrossFit methodology because—as Eric O’Connor beautifully described in his article “Is CrossFit Too Intense For Me?”—it drives the tremendous results our athletes achieve. Training intensely or at higher power outputs is key to improving any measurable fitness or health marker, such as strength, endurance, or body fat.

When discussing intensity, it’s also essential to understand the concept of relative intensity. High intensity means something different for every athlete based on their physical and psychological tolerances. For example, if a top CrossFit Games competitor goes all out, they can complete Fran in about 2:20. If I go all out, I’ll finish my last pull-up near the six-minute mark. The competitor’s power output measured in watts is much higher than mine because they completed the same work faster. However, regardless of power output, our relative intensity is the same. We both gave everything we had.  

Intensity In Practice

CrossFit is constantly varied functional movements executed at high intensity. We covet the intensity for the results it delivers. However, going all out every workout (four to six times per week) doesn’t work for most of us. This is a recipe for burnout, injury, and decreased fitness and health markers.

So what should intensity look like in practice, on a day-to-day basis, in the gym, park, or garage? If your focus is long-term fitness and health, like it is for most of us, most workouts should be done somewhere around 70-85% intensity. The focus should be on smooth, excellent technique while flirting with an uncomfortable pace. I know Coach Greg Glassman recently said he’s looking for A- technique and A+ speed. Borrowing his terminology, as a conservative coach, I might lean more toward A technique and B+ speed for most workouts, especially with newer, less healthy, or older athletes and those recovering from injury or coming off a long layoff. This approach not only reduces the risk of injury and burnout but also ensures steady progress and long-term health. 

Occasionally, there are opportunities to ramp up intensity, such as during thoughtfully programmed benchmark tests or when we feel great. On these days, we can push toward 100% while maintaining excellent technique. However, these days are exceptions, perhaps occurring two or three times a month, and even less often as we age or face external stresses. More frequently, we’ll encounter days where we’re tired, stressed, or not at our best. On these days, lower intensity or simply going through the motions may be better for our long-term fitness and health.

Health is Not a Sprint

A wise track coach once told me a great way to get very strong over the long term is to make medium weights feel like light weights. Instead of pushing maximal weights regularly, spend time squatting, pressing, cleaning, deadlifting, or snatching a particular weight, and you will master it. You will be able to perform the movement at that weight with excellent technique all the time. Then, you can bump the weight up a little bit and start the process over. Basically, we’re blending skill work and strength work. Over the course of weeks, months, and years, tremendous strength can be built in this manner with less risk of injury and burnout. We can use the same philosophy for CrossFit met-cons and earn the right to work out with high intensity. 

For a beginner, this means scaling loads and volume of sets and reps as needed while setting baseline numbers in your workouts. The priority of each workout is refining the mechanics of fundamental movements and practicing them consistently to develop a certain level of mastery. For now, intensity takes a back seat. This means the focus is NOT on getting the best time possible or maximizing reps or rounds. Technique is paramount! During this process, which may last a year or more, a coach’s guidance on nudging intensity slowly without compromising mechanics and consistency is indispensable. Workout scores are recorded purely as data points, not as an assessment of whether our performance was good or bad. While recording our numbers on the whiteboard inevitably urges us to increase intensity (athletes will die for points, after all), we must be careful not to ignore the process and focus solely on results. Recording and measuring progress allows us to analyze our fitness to learn where to improve. In this way, the competition results-based fitness fosters is an excellent motivator for us to eat better, sleep better, do extra technique work, and work on our weaknesses. However, when competition spurs an athlete to push through an unsustainable sequence of workouts performed at too high an intensity, burnout, injury, and performance degradation may result. Though the after-effect of pure exhaustion post-workout may be missed when intensity is decreased a bit, novice athletes can take solace in knowing that even at lower intensities, their workout scores will inevitably improve as they practice the movements.

For a more advanced CrossFit athlete who has achieved a high level of competency in the movements and can push to greater levels of intensity (i.e., is more comfortable with uncomfortable) without letting technique degrade to any significant or unsafe degree, we can use past results to calculate a ballpark score as one factor to guide that day’s performance. For example, if an athlete’s all-time best performance in Fran is 3 minutes, 80% of this all-out effort is 3:45. Depending on a whole host of other factors — sleep, nutrition, stress, fatigue, current fitness level — the athlete can decide what intensity level they want to hit, but the 3:45 time provides a solid target for high intensity and excellent technique. Calculating our 80% intensity for all the workouts we regularly repeat also gives us a good gauge for approaching workouts we have not seen before, allowing us to find that sweet spot of great movement coupled with a somewhat uncomfortable speed. 

Regardless of experience level, the trip to the gym and the warm-up are excellent times for an athlete to assess their physical and mental state and start planning scaling and intensity options for the workout. Again, newer athletes should prioritize movement mechanics rather than intensity and take small breaks as needed during the workout to prevent their technique from faltering. More experienced athletes can determine if they are going to push into the 80% high-intensity zone, back off a little bit, or go for a rare all-out effort. Even as the workout starts, the athlete can continue to “auto-regulate” their intensity based on the physical and mental challenge and feedback from a coach. At the end of the workout, the score is recorded to provide another data point to guide skill acquisition and intensity in future sessions.

The Dose Makes the Poison

With training intensity, a key component for maximizing the results, some might believe that not going all out on each workout will blunt adaptation. Over the long term, too much intensity, too soon, and too often causes more problems. Years ago, Coach Glassman warned that if someone attacked the Workout of the Day all out every day, they would be completely burnt out within six weeks. I’ve seen this happen to very gifted athletes who maximize intensity in every workout. Eventually, their performance drops, no matter how hard they push themselves. Their fitness decreases, too, and the only “cure” for this type of nervous system and metabolic fatigue is an extended period of low-intensity work that allows the body to recover. This is a case of three steps back for two steps forward. 

Improperly dosing intensity can also lead to knee, shoulder, back, and hip aches and pains that make us feel old and unfit. Displaying fitness in the gym or the real world is difficult when we’re hurting. It’s rather telling that Rich Froning, in a recent Mayhem podcast, made the statement about his training for the CrossFit Games: “I’ve destroyed my body for 13 years. Am I going to pay for it later? Yeah.” A different approach is warranted when our goal is long-term health and fitness, not competitive greatness. The body needs time to recover from both intensity and volume of work. Modulating intensity as needed from workout to workout is a great way to get fit while reducing the risk of musculoskeletal breakdown that will lead to forced reduced intensity or time off. 

Finally, pushing maximal intensity every day is very taxing mentally.  We’ve all had those days when we just can’t bring ourselves to work out because we don’t want to feel the pain. When that dread results in us missing several workouts or quitting CrossFit altogether, our fitness takes a big hit. We would be much better off not skipping workouts and doing them at a lower intensity or simply just going through the motions. Combining low, medium, and high-intensity outputs allows us to avoid all of the pitfalls of too much intensity and ensures continued progress for years. 

As I said at the beginning of the article, I’m not sure how these thoughts will resonate with other CrossFit coaches and athletes I greatly admire. This is NOT a criticism of the CrossFit methodology, which has produced amazing fitness and health results for hundreds of thousands of people. These are simply my observations as a CrossFit athlete and coach on implementing the methodology for those looking to optimize their fitness for the long term. This is advice I would give myself if I were starting over and that I follow today. None of us do CrossFit to build our fitness over 30 or 75 or 236 days. Instead, we are engaged in a lifelong commitment to increase our work capacity. By applying intensity judiciously, we can sustain long periods of progress, avoid burnout, decrease the risk of injury, and enjoy the process. This sounds like a solid approach for kicking ass.

3-2-1 Go!

what’s your experience with intensity?

1. Has your relationship with intensity changed over time?
2. What factors make you push intensity even when your body tells you not to?

About the Author

Stephane Rochet is a Senior Content Writer for CrossFit. He has worked as a Flowmaster on the CrossFit Seminar Staff and has over 15 years of experience as a collegiate/tactical strength and conditioning coach. He is a Certified CrossFit Trainer (CF-L3) and enjoys training athletes in his garage gym.