HQ Media’s Tony Budding asks Valley CrossFit’s Katie Hogan, who finished 20th at the 2011 Reebok CrossFit Games, just how inferior women are compared to men.
The tongue-in-cheek question is a response to the notion of prescribed women’s weights on the CrossFit.com WOD.
“For me, in my gym, in my training, we’ve never had a set percentage or like amount of the men’s weight that we should or should not do,” Hogan says. “I’ve tried and done many workouts as prescribed. I’ve scaled some. I’ve watched men scale as well.”
In fact, she’s only done Grace at the prescribed 135 lb.
In CrossFit competition, everything has to be identical for each athlete competing. Loads, reps and distances must be exact. The top men require heavier loads than the top women. But training is different. Athletes should assess the prescribed workout, taking into account their strengths and weaknesses, where they are physically and mentally, and what their broad training goals are.
Scaling principles apply equally to men and women. Having official women’s weights that are lower than men’s for every training session imposes an artificial limitation on women that HQ doesn’t support. Budding suggests it’s a ludicrous notion that he and Rich Froning Jr. should always train at the same weights because they're both men, but somehow he and Hogan shouldn’t because she’s a woman.
Budding asks, “Should a woman’s vote count for just two-thirds of a man’s?”
5min 45sec
Additional reading: Testing Fitness as Sport by Tony Budding, published Sept. 8, 2010.