Make Your Training Journal Work for You

By keeping a log of your workouts you can track your progress, see improvement, and determine what works for you. Most training journals include exercise, number of repetitions, number of sets, weight lifted and such. But you may want to consider these other components:

• time your workout started and stopped
• time spent doing physical activity unrelated to your structured exercise
• average heart rate attained
• energy levels before, during and after your workout
• quality and quantity of sleep
• emotions preceding and following your workout

Whether you use the items above is up to you; you should determine what makes sense for your goals so you can follow, change, and systematically chart your progress.