It’s happened to you more times than you care to admit.
I know this because it’s also happened to me. It’s the hair-pulling, infuriating, stop-and-go relationship far too many of us have with our goals in the gym.
You know the drill:
Jacked up on a new goal and a fresh batch of supplements, you absolutely destroy the gym for a few weeks, maybe even a couple months or so. Once the potency of the Butt-Blast 9000 pre-workout begins to fade, the shine of your goals weakens, and the reality sinks in regarding how long it will take you to actually accomplish your goals, you cannot help but feel disheartened. Frustrated. Discouraged. And so you miss a workout. A few more. And eventually, it’s been a few weeks or months since you’ve stepped under the bar. Around and around we go this not-so-merry-go-round. We’re always vowing to do things better and smarter and more consistently, but we’re never quite able to make things stick the way we want them to. No matter how experienced we are in the gym, we all have these lapses. The excuses not to go to the gym grow so loud that they nearly drown out the reasons we go in the first place. What’s a lifter to do?
How to Get Off the Inconsistency Merry-Go-Round
One of the simplest ways to fix your motivation and consistency issues is to write out your workouts.
Yup. Just a pen, a piece of paper, and your workouts.
Perhaps because it is so simple, or that it looks too much like more work, or we feel like it won’t do us any good, it’s dismissed out of hand. We don’t think of it as something that can drive better and more consistent performances in the gym. Keeping a logbook won’t solve all of your motivation and consistency problems. But it can fix a few of them. It can give you some much needed objectivity, provide a platform for your training goals, and help you to be more engaged when you are at the gym.
The Science Behind Self-Monitoring
Self-monitoring performance is nothing new.
Research performed in classrooms found that self-monitoring increased “attention to task”, positive behaviors, and improved social skills. More relevant to our goals in the gym, a meta-study of 22 different weight loss studies found that self-monitoring—most often using a simple paper diary—consistently had a significantly positive influence on outcomes.
Another study done with a group of university students found that self-monitoring was as effective as being supervised. This is something that matters when you consider that most of us train alone. With no coach or trainer on our butt to make sure we complete the workout we succumb to “don’t-feel-like-it” and “ah, it’s just one workout.”
Your training log is a platform for you to plan and organize your workouts. Having the sets, reps, weights and cardio work for the day detailed out ahead of time means that you are more likely to stick to the program as opposed to stepping into the gym and winging it.
The Powerful & Sneaky Benefits of Logging Your Workouts
Beyond acting as a voice of reason, and the whole improved results thing, there are a metric ton of reasons a logbook can help the average lifter in the gym.
For instance, purely anecdotal and unscientific research has shown that it helps make you taller, funnier, and 8% better-looking.* While the effects may not tingle as much as your pre-workout, or make your glutes pop like your new compression gear, the old-school approach of logging your workouts will do some of the following things:
Keeps you organized.
Your training log is a platform for you to plan and organize your workouts. Having the sets, reps, weights and cardio work for the day detailed out ahead of time means that you are more likely to stick to the program as opposed to stepping into the gym and winging it. Having your workout history in hand also means that you can smartly plan recovery days and deloading phases, plan for more aggressive training, and so on. So basically it’s like a day planner. But for the gym. And way cooler.
Keeps you accountable to your goals.
Research has shown that thinking about our goals versus writing out a plan to make them happen does not work. Which means that if there are big thangs you want to accomplish writing them out is step one. Accountability works on a few different levels when you use a logbook, but one of the biggies is writing out your goals in it. Having targets and objectives for the things you want to accomplish in the gym means that you are continually focused on progression and improving.
Helps salvage those bad workouts.
One peculiar benefit of using a logbook that I have noticed is that I am much more likely to finish the bad workouts. Why is this? The idea that I will have to write out a “DNF” or “workout abandoned” in my
Looking back and being able to see what led you to generate massive results is crucial, as is knowing what is causing you to train like garbage.
training journal is almost as distasteful as a bad workout. I will struggle through that rugged workout in order to secure myself a slightly more favorable review when I detail it later.
Keeps you from getting sidetracked at the gym.
Are you the type of gym-goer that walks into the gym and does what they “feel like” doing each day? How complete are those workouts? Can you honestly say that you are getting the most from yourself with this approach? Having a workout log shows you what you are actually doing at the gym. Initially the results might be a little jarring. For many, seeing how little they are actually doing at the gym is a bit of a reality-check. When you have goals and workouts in hand you are more apt to finish what you start. After all, without a plan you have nothing to keep you in the gym when you are feeling off, or a little tired, or it’s sunny out and you’d rather go play.
Shows you patterns of progression.
This aspect alone makes your logbook worth its weight in gold (or high grade, farm-to-table protein, in our case). There are times in your training where you made real, concrete progress. Where everything came together and you experienced some serious and punishing success. Seeing these phases on paper, and the circumstances that brought them about, is just the kind of intel that allows you to replicate those same circumstances moving forward. For me, a big kick-in-the-glutes moment came when I saw how little I was sleeping over the course of the week. As a result, my workouts were always trailing off in performance and increasing in perceived effort as the week went on. It was something I initially chalked up to accumulated fatigue from my workouts. More sleep at the beginning of the week became a focus, and it resulted in a big time impact on my training. Looking back and being able to see what led you to generate massive results is crucial, as is knowing what is causing you to train like garbage. You take those lessons, apply them moving forward, and become a smarter lifter as a result.
Keeps you consistent.
Losing focus and developing a wandering eye when it comes to the gym isn’t terribly uncommon. All you gotta do is watch the swelling numbers in the gym after New Years. The NYE noobs mean well, but it is far too common for them to blast out for a few weeks before losing focus and tapping out. If you aren’t recording what you are doing in the gym it’s easy to lose sight of what you are trying to accomplish in the first place. Big goals and grand intentions become nothing more than passing wishes if you don’t bother to write out the progress required to accomplish them.
Motivates you.
Lastly, there is the motivational aspect of journaling your training. And it comes in different ways and at different times. There is the moment where you recount a great workout with pride in the pages of the book. Or where you look back with nostalgia at how far you have come. Or you read back to a workout that you once considered undoable and you completely destroyed it. These moments provide regular shots of jet fuel to the fire. They are critical in keeping your butt in the gym over the long term.
How to Use Your Training Log for Max Effect
How each lifter or athlete uses their logbook is unique to them.
I’ve watched athletes write out literally pages of notes after practice. Others stick to the basics of the workout and a quick effort rating out of ten or a letter grade. No matter how in-depth you want to get, here are some best practices for starting out with this tool:
If you are the cerebral type who likes to write an essay I say go for it, but make sure it’s something you can sustain.
Make your entries as detailed as is manageable.
Above all else, results are driven by consistent application of effort. If this means that you write only the bare essentials (weights/reps/sets) to stick with the habit of writing out your workouts then so be it. If you are the cerebral type who likes to write an essay I say go for it, but make sure it’s something you can sustain.
Track the most important things.
If it’s important to you, it should be measured. Period. So don’t measure extraneous stuff that has no real impact on your goals. Another period. Measuring just a couple of the most important things (for me, this was sleep and wake-up times) insures that you stay focused on them. You won’t get distracted by keeping track of a butt-ton of different aspects of your training that have little to no impact on your performance.
Focus on doing things better.
We all have crap workouts. Those infrequent showings of low effort and bad mood happen to the best of us. But beating yourself up in your logbook isn’t going to change things. Writing out how much you hated the workout, how much you suck, and jumping on the dogpile doesn’t really serve you any good. Instead, use those bad workouts to understand what drove them in the first place. Chart a path forward to avoid the circumstances that led to the below average performance.
Keep it accurate.
Between all of the sets, reps and weights, trying to remember all those fancy number thingies can be tough. A good training log is an accurate training log. You should write out your workouts within a reasonable time of having completed your workout. If I am doing a long session in the gym I will often bring the training journal and fill it out as I go along. If I am just doing a couple exercises and a bunch of conditioning work I’ll outline everything when I get home as there is much less to remember. In either case, the goal is accuracy in results. Spend a couple minutes at the end of the workout to quickly go over what you did, how it lines up with what you wanted to do, and what you will do to improve moving forward.
Use it to pump your tires.
I understand the temptation to only recognize and reward progress when it happens in the broadest sense possible. It might be when we crush our squat PB, or hit the weight gain or weight loss milestone we’ve been working so hard towards. Your logbook has many uses, and using it as a place where you can reflect and celebrate your successes in the gym should absolutely be one of them. At the end of the day, achieving something big in the gym is a result of a thousand little wins. Mark them and recognize yourself appropriately. Those little daily jolts of confidence will keep you trucking long after the initial wave of inspiration fades away.
The Takeaway
For many people, going to the gym is punishment enough.
It’s simply something to suffer through. (You poor bastards.)
But for those who want to go to the gym and not merely survive it but accomplish something of value, using a logbook can help get you there a little bit faster. Write out your workouts for the next couple weeks. Learn your style of journal-keeping, Pick up on those bad habits. Then go forth and lift stronger, smarter, and more awesome than ever before.
About the Author
Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national level athlete. He writes over at YourWorkoutBook.com about habit formation, motivation, and anything related to kicking ass at the gym. He’s also tall and can swim faster than you.
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