It’s not the squat rack. It’s not the bench press. It’s definitely not the Smith Machine.
If you don’t have this piece of equipment and use it for every single workout, you’re leaving potential strength gains or weight loss on the table.
It’s your journal.
I know, that was a bit sneaky. Is a journal even a piece of exercise equipment? But hear me out: without a journal, you aren’t getting you best results in the gym.
Tracking Workouts: The Path to Consistent Progress
Most importantly, a journal helps you track your workouts. By recording your sets, reps, and weight moved, you can easily see your strength gains over time. In addition, knowing what you did last time allows you to build in an increase from session to session. That’s called progression and it’s how everyone has gotten stronger since the dawn of time.
Nutrition Tracking: The Foundation of Your Fitness Goals
Secondly, a journal helps you track your nutrition. No matter your fitness goal, knowing what you are eating is critical. If you want to get stronger, you need to take in enough calories to rebuild the muscles you are damaging through training. If you want to lose weight, you need to burn more calories throughout the day than you are eating. By tracking your food every day, you can begin to apply some simple math to ensure results.
Understanding Your Body: How Journaling Provides Context
Third, a journal gives you context for the way your body feels. If you feel horrible at the end of the week, your journal might be able to clarify if it’s because you are over-trained, under-fed, under-recovered, sick, or some combination of those things. Without a proper record of your actions through the week, you’re just guessing.
Digital vs. Physical Journals: What Works Best?
Now, I’ve been using the term “journal” throughout this article, but your individual execution of the idea will vary. The most popular way to track workouts, nutrition, sleep, etc. currently is through one or more apps. There are plenty on the market to choose from and I have had some great results from various apps. You might wear a device which helps you track your workout intensity, daily steps and sleep. There is certainly a place for such things.
Conclusion: Want Real Progress? Start Journaling Today
In my opinion, there is nothing better than an actual, physical journal paired with an ink pen. The ability to track every piece of data in one place along with possibly unrelated information such as your thoughts and feelings allows for more context when viewed in hindsight.
When I experienced the greatest physical transformation in my life, it was due in part to a physical journal that I carried with me everywhere I went and wrote in everyday. It helped me identify things that were working well and things that could be tweaked, express my frustrations when things weren’t going according to plan, and gave me data to study and apply to future workouts.
Anyone who is serious about making progress in their health and fitness is recording their data somewhere. If you want to make progress, get a journal.
Author: Jon Barr
