In a previous article on Take Fit I talked about running your fitness program in the same way you would run a business. The main point there was that in order to make progress you have to track your progress, in other words, you need to keep records just like you would when running a business. Today I thought I’d drive the nail home a bit further by using my own personal experience.
One of the obvious mistakes I made when I first started getting into the whole fitness thing was not keeping a fitness journal.
Initially my workouts would just involve doing whatever exercise I felt like doing. This approach might be alright if you just want to maintain a certain level of fitness, but if you want to make any real progress you need a much more structured and planned-out way of doing things.
Eventually I came to grips with the reality that this method of working out was getting me nowhere quickly. So my next step was to find some recommended routines on the Internet and put them into practice. Great! I had a goal and a plan to achieve that goal.
I soon found that following a workout plan without recording my progress was only slightly better than having no plan at all.
Let’s say on one day I complete a workout, and then the next day I have a headache and just do a few exercises. Then the day after that I do the same workout I did on the first day but only complete half my reps. Obviously it’s not looking like a good week, but a month down the line when I look back at my progress, all I can say is that I’ve been following such-and-such a workout plan for 4 weeks. If I were able to drill down and see how well I’ve followed that plan it would give me a lot more information.
By keeping a workout journal to monitor and track my progress I finally got in control of my fitness.
Now that I journal my workouts I can reliably see when I am making progress or when I might be starting to hit a plateau (in which case I can mix things up). It also gives me some extra motivation to be consistent with my workouts and my diet so that I don’t have to look at ‘blank days’ (days when there is nothing to fill in).
Check back tomorrow for an example of what my journals look like. It’ll be a free spreadsheet that you can download in Microsoft Excel format.
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