Why we are different

So what makes our CrossFit Gym different from every other Gym or CrossFit Gym?

I got an email from an athlete I work with who is also a member at another CrossFit gym that surprised me. In the email, the athlete explained to me how the members and trainers of the gym they belong to were criticizing them for not being as fast or not doing as much work as everyone else. The athlete was very discouraged to say the least. That got me thinking - how are we different from all of these other gyms?
CrossFit has thousands of great sayings about scaling ("your only as good as today", "universally scalable", "its scaled for you", etc) and for the most part I think CrossFit gyms have gotten it right. However, there are a few gyms out there that take the "elite fitness" a little too seriously. Do we want all of our members to have "elite fitness"? YES!!!! Do we want them to have it yesterday? NO!!! "Elite fitness" takes a lifetime to achieve if at all. This is where scaling becomes important. You will never see a standard weight attached to any of our WOD's like most gyms. This is because 90% of CrossFitters probably shouldn't be doing that much weight, and if everyone sees the "standard" weight they feel weak or not "elite" if they cant do that weight. Our trainers can tell you how it should feel.  For example, "Fran" 21-15-9 Thruster #95 and Pull ups. We will tell our classes that Fran is not a 10 minute workout and you should be able to complete your rounds fairly unbroken so choose a weight that works for you. We will also advise each and every athlete in our classes as to an approximate weight that we believe is appropriate and then we let them decide.
 Another thing that makes us different is that while most CrossFit gyms do know all of there members by name, we take it a step further by getting to know each member of our gym.  We keep an eye on how much weight each member is using or how easy or hard a workout might be for them so that the next time they come, we will be able to help them scale better.
 We also will not choose your scaling for you. As we go over the WOD and all of the movements, we will show you all of the modifications that can be used that day. YOU get to choose which modifications you would like to implement in your workout. If you finish the workout too fast and didn't work hard enough, then we know for next time where we are able to push you a little more. But at least you will come back for next time. If we were to scale something for you and make it way too hard and it took you 20 minutes longer then everyone else, you would most likely become discouraged and won't want to come back.
We are next to a Physical Therapy practice, this is nice for 2 reasons. One is that some of our members come from that practice into our gym, which allows our trainers to work with athletes with a wide variety of injuries and compensations.  Our trainers have worked with a wide array of athletes so we are prepared to work with any injuries/compensations and make it work for CrossFit. Reason number two is that all of the physical therapist are members at our gym so they understand what it is we do and how important it is that we do it.
 These are only a few things that make us different but I believe they are some of the important ones.