Celebrate In The Face Of Failure

So you set your time frame, you created clear, achievable goals – you journalled every day and you stuck to the plan. Yet you did not achieve success.

Well guess what, its not a cause for doom and gloom. It’s not a reason to cry and eat chocolate and icecream. It’s a reason to celebrate. Why you ask? Well I’ve been there. Not very long ago! You may have read my recent journey. I decided to take three weeks and use them to their fullest potential – I wanted to get back into working out and get back into shape. I stuck to the plan and journalled every day – yet I didn’t see the results I was looking for. Perhaps my goals were not clear enough – but the fact that I didn’t see any physical results was quite depressing and would not have changed no matter what my goals were.

But don’t give up now! It is not the end of the world – and you did not fail.

 

• You persevered
• You stuck to the plan
• You have working data

First reason. You persevered. You got to the end of the time frame and you didn’t give up. Perseverance is a hugely loaded word. It means to continue even when the going looks impossible. If you can persevere with something, that means you have amazing self control and self motivation. That is a reason to celebrate. It is a reason to pat yourself on the back and realise you have achieved something you didn’t necessarily set out to achieve. Well done.

Secondly – you stuck to the plan. You journalled and you worked out like you said you would. You set goals that were clear and achievable and you had a set time frame. Yes, sticking to the plan is similar to perseverance. However, perseverance has to do with the mind, and sticking to the plan I think has a bit more to do with the physical. Persevering is making a mental choice, and sticking to the plan is actually doing it. Congratulations on following through with your mental choice!

Thirdly – you have working data. You kept your journal and you can look back and see what went wrong.

You have victory in your hands! You have the perseverance, you have the stickability, and you have the ability to alter your program. Now you have all the tools you need to go for your goals and achieve success. That is the thing with fitness – you’ll never find the perfect solution first time. It requires a lot of hard work – mistakes, failures – a lot of experiences that will only shape you and help you learn and achieve the ultimate solution. This is what sustainable fitness is all about!

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Free Take Fit Workout Journal Template!

Yesterday I talked about the advantages of keeping a workout journal.  Today I’m offering you my workout journal template for your own use!

My requirements for a workout journal are simple:

1. It must be simple (think KISS)
2. It must be easily update-able (otherwise I just won’t get round to using it

To download the template just right-click on the title below and choose ‘Save Target As…’

Take Fit Workout Journal

You probably won’t need to use all of the rows in ‘Workout/exercises’ column.  Most workout plans will only require 2-3 different routines per week.  You’ll see I’ve also included a section for you to check off dietary goals such as the number of days you’ve successfully avoided sugar for example.

To see how I’ve used this template I’ll take a photo of my own workout journal and upload it as a follow-up post.  So check back here in a day or so.

I really hope you find this template useful.  Adapt it, and use it however you would like.  Let me know if you think there are any improvements that could be made, but remember to keep it simple!

Popularity: 18% [?]

Don’t want to make progress? Then don’t keep a fitness Journal!

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.

Popularity: 1% [?]