Becoming the "Journal Guy"

When you look around your gym of choice, there's always the guys with the paper and pencil writing down everything they do. I was never a fan of these guys.

Studying Exercise Science and always being into fitness, I have been very dialed into my own training. I have an idea of my weight ranges for different lifts and never felt the need to document each workout. Also, when I would go ask people why they kept a workout journal, the responses I heard were not very appetizing. I'm all for tracking change, but many of the people I spoke to had no real idea why they were documenting their workouts. This made me swear to never be a "Journal Guy."

However as 2013 rolled around, I wanted to go outside my established comfort zone. With many of my clients, I document workouts and weight changes because it is a good selling point when it is time for renewals. I also started to realize that documenting this information may be playing a role into why I was continuously seeing change with those clients. After many mental battles, I decided my 2013 resolution would be to begin documenting my workouts. I decided to become a "Journal Guy."

This transition wasn't easy. At first, I would hide my journal in a corner somewhere and only go to it when I felt the least amount of people were looking. I didn't want to be classified with the people who were carrying a journal or paper just for the sake of doing it. Then a few people caught on to my discomfort with carrying a journal, so they started calling me "The Journal Guy." After a few days of this, I just stopped caring. I was going to document my workouts and just deal with the ridicule.

Then something started to change. About 1.5 months into this experiment, the journal showed its power. For that month and a half, I had been diligent in documenting each lift, each rep, and each weight amount. I would check previous workouts and try to add to the weight lifted previously or at least match my previous workout. My strength has reached new heights! Ask me about the day I renegade rowed 100 lbs dumbbells out of nowhere. I know exactly what I need to lift each time and it has been showing! My workouts have become much more effective.

So........ being the journal guy isn't that bad after all. Just do it with purpose!

Some tips for good journal keeping:
-Document everything! The more data the better!
-Try to match or beat your previous work. This is a great way to always strive for adaptation. As always, listen to your body though. Some days are not meant for pushing the limit.
-Know when it is time to change up the routine. If you plateau for a longer period of time, you might want to switch out some exercises or manipulate the volume a bit.
-By documenting everything, you can catch overtraining before it puts you out for a month or two.
-Include how you felt during different workouts. If it's really good day or a really bad day, write a small note about it. This will help you understand the data better when looking back at it.
-Write goals in your journal and look at those goals before the start of each workout!