How to properly keep a workout journal

Author: Timko Ilya - master of the whole project and fitness trainer.
2012-03-13

Is it necessary to keep a workout diary at all? Well, technically, you could skip it. The fact that you have these records or not won't make your muscles grow faster. I confess that I haven’t recorded my workouts for about three years now. Probably just laziness.

However, if a professional athlete can train without a diary and rely on their intuition, for beginners, a workout diary is quite an important thing. A diary not only disciplines a novice athlete but also motivates them for new "achievements." When you can visually see your results recorded on paper, it encourages you to push forward. Of course, if a lazy person suddenly starts keeping such a diary, they will still remain lazy. Nevertheless, such records discipline a person and urge them to do just a little bit more.

Moreover, you won’t have to rack your brain anymore wondering whether you did bench presses in your last workout or not. And if you did, you’ll easily recall what weight and how many times.

Now let’s discuss how to keep it and what to write down in it.

Clearly, you'll want to write down the names of the exercises, weights, sets, and repetitions. That’s the bare minimum. For greater thoroughness, here are a few more things to include.

Total time spent on the workout. You'll see that for the same workout, the time can vary. This mainly depends on your fatigue level for the day and the intensity of the workout itself.

Total number of sets for the workout. By itself, this indicator is not particularly informative, but it’s not difficult to count. It could be useful for us later on.

Total number of lifts for the workout. This is an important indicator that characterizes the volume of your workout. Simply add up the number of lifts across all sets and exercises.

Total tonnage for the workout. This is the total weight lifted during the entire workout. For example, if you did 4 sets of 10 reps at 100 kg in squats, then you lifted 4x10x100 = 4000 kg. You do this for the entire workout. If you performed exercises with your body weight, then use your body weight for the lifted weight.

Average weight lifted. Divide the total tonnage by the total number of lifts to find the average weight lifted during the workout. Ideally, this value should gradually increase from month to month.

Workout intensity. Divide the time spent on the workout by the total number of sets. This way, you can find out how much time you spend on average for each set. The less time it takes, the higher the workout intensity.

I think you can also guess that all these indicators can be calculated not only for a workout but also for a week, a month, and so on. You will then see a complete and clear dynamic of changes in your loads and results. Furthermore, you can calculate both total (summed) values and average (relative) values for a week, a month, etc.

For 4 years, I counted all these indicators and created graphs of changes in my quantitative and qualitative training metrics month by month and year by year. Now I train purely by intuition and don’t feel the need to keep a workout diary, but all of my trainees have to maintain one without exception.