The Importance of a Training Journal by Doberman Dan
Keeping a record of what you do and how you do it is vital to bodybuilding success. I think keeping a journal is one of the best things I've done to help myself consistently improve. If you keep track of what you've done in the past, it will be easier for you to see what works for you. You can then repeat these actions to insure your future success.
"The palest of ink is better than the best memory."
I've never understood why people want to come to the gym time after time, repeating exactly what they've done before. That is not progress, my friend.
In order to improve and make gains, your training must be progressive in some manner. You can make progress 3 different ways:
Do more weight than the previous session
Do more reps with the same weight
Do more work within a set time frame
If you don't remember exactly what you did in your previous training sessions, how do you expect to exceed it?
I'll be willing to bet if you just finally discipline yourself to start keeping a training journal, you'll increase your gains within 30 days or less.
You've known for years you should be keeping a training journal and you've told yourself you're gonna do it...but you still haven't done it!
Just do it, OK?!!!
Tips on How To Keep a Good Journal
Write down the time of day you worked out.
Write down how much weight you used in your exercises and the number of reps.
Write down how the movements felt, i.e. "50s are too light."
Write down how you looked and what was going on in your mind.
Write down what you wore or what music you listened to.
Write down what you ate and when you ate it.
Write down how you looked when you woke up, went to sleep, etc.
Write down how much cardio you did.
Write down how much you weigh.
Write down the other aspects of you life i.e., if you had a good day, a bad day, it was raining, you had a fight with your girlfriend. This will help you attribute outside factors into your performance in the gym.
Let's suppose you had a bad workout on February 1st and you can't figure out why since your diet and supplementation were the same as your last training session. If you see an entry in your journal that you got a bad grade on a test that morning, you might find the reason your training sucked that day was that your head wasn't into it. This would stop you from radically changing your training, diet or supplementation based on bad information.
A training and dietary journal will be your best friend when assessing progress.
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