We talk all the time about keeping a food log, but what about your workout log?
One of the simplest things I do to keep my clients making progress is that I track the sets, reps, and weight of everything they do during every single workout.
Then I just make sure that they lift more and/or heavier, over time.
This is one of those ultra simple things that most people don't do.
And if you don't keep a journal, you could be totally wasting your time in the gym. Really, if you aren't getting stronger, you're spinning your wheels.
Go to any gym, and look at how many people are walking around the gym with a journal or a clip board recording everything. Most gyms, less than 10% of the people there are keeping a journal.
And those 10% are usually the only ones who are making progress.
A Few Things You Should Always Track
For people working out in the gym, you should track:
1.) How much weight you can overhead press for 5 or so reps
2.) How much weight you can deadlift for 5 reps
3.) How much weight you can squat for 5 reps?
Or: How low the can do a single leg pistol squat for 5 reps)?4.) How many pullups you can do OR how little assistance are you using to do pullups on the assisted pullup machine?
For people working out at home, you should track:
1.) What ever the heaviest kettlebell or dumbbell you have, how many reps can you overhead press it for?
2.) How many kettlebell swings or snatches can you do in 5 minutes?
3.) How low the can do a single leg pistol squat for 5 reps?
4.) How strong is your dumbbell bent over row?
Or: How many door frame pullup bar negatives can you do?
Or: How many door frame pullup bar pullups can you do?
For people doing kettlebell workouts, you should track:
1.) How many Get Ups can you do each side with the heaviest kettlebell you have?
2.) How many kettlebell swings can you do in 5 minutes?
3.) How many kettlebell snatches can you do in 5 minutes?
Do You Always Do Sets of Five?
Of course not.
We may do one month that's sets of 20, and next month is sets of five, and the month after that is sets of fifteen, and the month after that is sets of eight.
Phases change with regularity. And for fat loss clients, all I really care about is that they get stronger within that phase. And that when we come back around to sets of five, that by the end of that phase they are stronger than the last time we did sets of five.
Now I know there are trainers reading this that think this is crazy.
By not doing some low rep strength all of the time, we aren't going to make strength gains as quickly as we could otherwise.
You know what though, my clients aren't strength athletes and it really doesn't matter.
We get more bang for the buck fat loss wise by working on one adaptation, then having a drastic change. Strength gains ARE a little slower, but it doesn't matter…
…because the only reason we are trying to gain strength is as part of the fat loss process.
We want to get strong to get lean.
Don't let the tool become the goal. Keep the main thing the main thing.
Strong is Hot
In general, the strongest girls and guys in the gym are the leanest and hottest.
This of course assumes your food is dialed in, but given that we talk about food all the time in this blog, I think it's ok to focus just on workouts today.
In the gym, your number one goal is to get stronger.
It's not to sweat more, grunt more, or hurt more, though occasionally those may show up also.
At any given body weight: The stronger girl is always leaner than the weaker girl and the stronger guy is always leaner than the weaker guy.
Lately the trend has been to also include moving better, and I think this is awesome. But lets get real – we work on moving better in order to get stronger. And we get stronger in order to get leaner.
The Main Thing is Getting Lean
So really it all boils down to doing things that help produce that result, and not doing things that don't produce that result.
You could go in the gym and do really "hard" workouts and sweat a lot and never produce any results. Or maybe you'll produce results for a month or two and then they'll stop.
I want you to focus on getting strong because it will help you produce the result you are after: Getting rockstar lean and staying rockstar lean.
I never really understand any of this. For me it’s all about having fun. Everything else is secondary.
Filchyboy- It is about having fun, but it’s also about getting results and seeing progress in your program. What’s the point of working so hard if your body is not responding to your training? Give it a try and start keeping track of a few workouts- guaranteed it will change the way you train.
Great post Josh.
I definitely make working out fun for my clients…
…but my clients don’t really pay me for fun. They pay me to get them results as fast as possible. In fact, really, waht they are payign for is to have their friends say “Wow, you look awesome! Have you been working out?”
And that’s what I provide for them. To get people results as fast as possible, it definitely requires tracking.
But different people have different goals. If it’s all about fun for you, then just do what’s fun!
For someone who’s idea of fun is gymnastics, you’re going to get a lot of fitness/body stuff taken care of with that anyway. But you have to realize that you aren’t most of my readers.
Alecia, you’re totally right. If you want to produce results in your workouts, nothing beats tracking.
That being said, I never judge people’s purpose/goals for working out. One thing about all of those years working in 24 hour fitness taught me is that everyone is there for a different reason. And everyone tends to think everyone else’s goals are crazy!
For some people it’s all about body fat percentage, for some it’s about a powerlifting total, for some it’s a CrossFit workout time, for some people it’s about bodybuilding, and for some people it’s just for fun.
BTW: That’s a pretty savage box jump you’ve got going in your picture!