Crossfit utilizes so many movements, exercises and modalities you need to spend time "playing" with each skill. I've been stressing lately the need to make sure that form is a priority. As a coach it's very important to me to stress it. It's needed to create safe functional movement that creates true fitness.
Oh the other hand. Trainees need times to explore and see how they do with movements that do not come naturally to them.
I had two conversations yesterday about this. One conversation where we talked about setting time aside for practicing lets say Handstand push-ups without getting the full ROM. Not being able to do something fully is what creates the challenge. When we are not doing benchmark workouts this is part of the process. When we are doing a benchmark workout and your unable to do a full ROM on a certain skill it should be scaled. No if ands or butts! If I was going to do todays WOD from CF main page I would have to drastically scale the Muscle ups and the Handstand push-ups if I wanted to create goals and use that workout as a benchmark or to see how I could improve on just that workout.
Other wise if your doing half a movement during a workout it seems some what useless. Lets say a dead-lift to my knee caps instead of all the way up to my waist...what the hell good would that be doing for me?
My point being....Play, work and play some more. It's what makes CF fun and interesting. We get to work on our ring dips, we get to fall out of handstands and laugh at ourself!
As a coach and a person who's in the process of learning all kinds of fun and exciting things this is also a goal...play with the skill!