In this post-Information Age, technology allows us to track all sorts of health metrics from the convenience of our wrist. Whether it’s your heart rate, energy expended or steps per week, “health” has never been more accessible. Moreover, for those who care about performance, brands such as “Whoop” promise through their wearable fitness devices to provide real time information on your readiness to train based on sleep and heart rate trends. Today’s article isn’t about the efficacy of these tools. Instead, I want to show you the simplest training tool that anyone, including our coaches at Hobart Strength Training can use. It’s cheap, it’s effective, doesn’t need to be charged and is immune to Wi-Fi outages – The Training Log. Today we’ll cover three main points: why you should track your training, what you should track and how to track your training.
Why you should log your training
Although it seems self-explanatory, you would be surprised how often I’ve spoken to individuals interested in improving their health and fitness who have never logged a workout before. As Francis Bacon said, “knowledge is power”. Since harnessing physical activity to drive changes requires some form of challenge, it’s important to not be fumbling around in the dark. As such, tracking elevates exercise from general “workouts” to structured “training”. Just like any good business will have Key Performance Indicators and metrics tracking whether or not operations are producing the desired results, a training log will keep an individual on target and honest with their efforts. if you can simply log things like energy levels, session efforts, exercise difficulty and more, you can start to see trends in your training and troubleshoot when things stop working.
Moreover, keeping a training log is probably the most accessible piece of fitness “tech” you can minimally invest into. Of course, there’s lots of things you can invest your money into when it comes to health. If using a wearable fitness device helps with adherence or you enjoy the “gamification” aspect of tracking workouts through an app and receiving awards, by all means utilise those features. However, disregarding the accuracy of wearable fitness devices for a moment, you don’t need to fall into the trap of feeling like you can’t get great insight without expensive tech.
Personally, I like to plan out my training just before I get stuck into a session, a coffee goes a long way too!
What you should log in training
Now what you should track is entirely up to you. You’re more than welcome to start each entry with “dear diary” if you so choose! There’s a myriad of metrics you can track and what matters is most salient to your goals. For example, if you’re competing in a Strength Sport where weight on the bar matters, it may be useful to not only track your weights per session, but also a trending estimated 1 rep max or repetition maximum. Conversely, if you’re preparing for some kind of endurance event, perhaps your average heart over a duration of time might be most important to you. We do however suggest a few data points to collect session-to-session:
- Overall session effort rating (on a scale of 1 – 10 where 10 is the most gruelling workout ever!)
- Weights, reps and sets lifted per exercise
- Effort of each set of each exercise, or at least the average effort of the sets on a main exercise
- Perhaps some general body composition metric at a semi-frequent interval, i.e., a consistent weigh-in at least once weekly under the similar conditions
- With any conditioning, the average heart rate and duration of your session
Of course, you can be far more granular than the above suggestions, but those act as a brief and relatively simple place to start. So, how exactly should you track your training?
How to log your training
Whether it’s via an app, your desktop web browser or pen and paper, there’s a myriad of ways to physically jot training notes down. What matters is how they are used. For example, I will keep in mind when logging each exercise, the “RPE” or Rate of Perceived Exertion. Using a scale of 1 – 10, and some contextual cues, RPE provides guidance and feedback. For instance, I might list “8 reps x 62.5kg @ RPE 7” for a Barbell Bench Press and note that in this example, my client experienced some shoulder pain during the warm-up and had a poor sleep. Perhaps then next week if the aforementioned client’s shoulder is feeling better, we can increase the load as an RPE 7 suggests we weren’t too close to failure. Good notes guide the training both within and across sessions, helping us make intelligent choices.
Get on track with Hobart Strength Training
If you’re looking to get the best results possible, you need a plan and somewhere to log it. Thankfully, our coaches at Hobart Strength Training can take the guesswork out of planning and help you focus on what matters most. Training with us ensures that we won’t miss your efforts. Moreover, we will track the relevant details with accurate notes that reflect our attention to detail. So, if you’re looking to take that next step, get in contact with us today.