Exercise – The Important Things You Must Write Down

Keeping yourself motivated and moving forward with your exercise and fitness plans are important.  And one way to do that is to keep track of your progress by staying organized and writing a few things down as you go.

Here are the four things you’ll need to record and track.

1. Set up a Program

There is one big difference between people who really build and maintain muscle, and those who just want to. Bodybuilders for example have a workout program. The other guys just go to the gym.

If you’re serious about fitness and gaining muscle, you need to work out an exercise program, and know what you’re aiming for and how you’re going to accomplish that. Not that you have to plan every workout for the next five years, but you should know what techniques you intend to use and how you plan to create a workout from those techniques. If you have a program, you can always change it, but if you don’t have one, you’ll struggle to reach your goals.

2. Keep a Weight Lifting Log

Whether you print out a log from your computer or just scribble in a notebook, you should always write down your workout, preferably as soon as you finish - so that you don’t forget anything. Note what exercises you did, weight and reps, and anything special, such as if you had pain or if you feel you’re ready to increase weight or reps.

You may feel a little silly at first writing all this stuff down, but the athletes who reach their goals are the ones who write everything down and track everything. They know where they’re going, and they know what it will take to get there because they know what they’ve already done. Look around the gym you attend and it might surprise you how many of the other members are keeping little logs.

3. Keep a Cardio Log

You can keep your weightlifting log and cardio log in the same notebook or separately, but you do need to track cardio, as well.

Cardio is where you burn the fat and build your endurance. You need to track what you’re doing and keep up with your interval training and how long you’re working out. Put as much effort into tracking and recording your cardio workout as you do into the workout itself. This will help you know when it’s time to change things up a little, increase your time or step up a level on your work interval.

4. Track Your Progress

Here’s where you log all of your workouts.

Once a month, or on whatever schedule works for you, take the time to look over your logs and track your progress. For the analyst in you, you could create a chart or graph. At the very least, look at your progress over the last few weeks and decide whether you’re reaching your progress goals, and if aren’t, why that may be. Are your goals too high?  Did you have a problem that is now resolved? If you need to change your goals in order to progress, you can adjust and restart with your new goals. Tracking progress this way helps you get where you want to go, and know when you have arrived.