An old Chinese proverb says, “The palest ink is better than the best memory.” Writing goals and plans down on paper is the first step towards achieving them. As Tony robbins says, “If you talk about it, it’s a dream, if you envision it, it’s possible, but if you schedule it, it’s real.” when every part of your fitness and nutrition program is put into writing, this ONE discipline alone has the potential to literally skyrocket your results…
Hopefully, you’re already writing down your goals, workout programs, training schedule and menu plans… If you haven’t yet, then that’s where you begin.
Once your training program is in writing, the step that takes your results to the next level is to keep a training journal. There’s no way you can intelligently make progress from one workout and one training cycle to the next if you don’t keep written records.
Training journals are a powerful motivational force because they create accountability to yourself. If you share your journal with a coach or training partner, then you’ve instantly created double accountability – first to yourself and then to someone else. Put your journal on the web like many of our Inner circle membershave done, and now you have massive accountability and motivational leverage.
If you like to use one of those fancy journals with all the columns and rows for sets, reps, etc already printed in them, or if you like to keep your nutritional intake in an electronic online journal, by all means, use them! But for starters, a plain old notebook will work just fine.
Your journal must contain, at the minimum: Date, exercise, sets, reps, and weight lifted. However, you can be much more detailed and creative with your training journal…
You can even “turbo-charge” your training journal by adding a rating scale to a number of objective and subjective measures. What gets measured gets done… But what gets “graded” gets done even better.
Here are some (but by no means all) of the things you could include in your journal:
Objective & Physical Measures:
Day/Date
Goals for this workout
Time started
Time finished
Exercises performed
Number of sets
Number of repetitions
Amount of weight used
Tempo (repetition speed)
Rest intervals
Went to failure?
Goals for next workout
Cardio: type, duration, intensity/Heart rate, calories burned, perceived exertion
Time to bed last night
Time out of bed/hours of sleep
Sleep quality
Energy level
Subjective & mental/emotional measures:
(rate yourself on scale from 1 to 10, or yes or no, where appropriate)
Recovery from previous workout
Discipline/stick-to-it-iveness
Positive attitude
Support system in place
Concentration/mental focus during workout
Read goals/affirmations (how many times)
Visualization/mental rehearsal
Quality of sleep
Level of stress (or relaxation level)
Scheduled and set goals for tomorrows workout?
Look better this week?
Got tougher today?
Overall performance today
If you don’t get straight “10’s”, don’t worry. Few people do, and noone does 100% of the time.
It’s not necessary or even possible to be perfect all of the time,but there’s nothing wrong with striving for excellence and askingyourself, “What do I have to do to make tomorrow a 10?
You can very easily identify weak-link areas in your training and nutrition when you rate your performance in multiple areas. the theory of multiple constraints, proposed by Eli Goldratt, says that between you and any goal you want to accomplish there is a limiting factor, or constraint, which acts as a bottleneck or choke point which ultimately determines how quickly you will reach your objective.
There may be ONE area of weakness which is the only thing holding you back, and you can’t fix a weakness if you don’t know you have one. Your job then, is to identify the bottlenecks or limiting factors and the only way to do that is write down and analyze your performance in multiple areas.
Choose the skills, disciplines, results and actions that are critical to your success in reaching a particular objective, and record them in your journal.
Be sure to rate yourself in areas that are not just physical. Peak performance experts say that the primary obstacles between you and your goals are very often mental or emotional. If youre only journaling sets and reps, you may be missing the real choke point.
A training journal can give you feedback, provide you with motivation, and hold you accountable.
But a TURBO-CHARGED journal can help you identify, improve and break through what could be the ONE roadblock that’s really holding you back from reaching your true potential.
– Tom Venuto
Tom,Quick question:I am eating 6 meals a day but I am a little confused. I used to wake up first thing in the morning and do my cardio 45 min. worth. Then eat breakfast. Is this wrong? Then in the evenings I do my weight training 45-60 mins. worth. Am I on the right track? I am doing cardio 7 day’s a week with 5 day’s of weight training. The only confusing thing is should I eat breakfast first thing in the am or do my cardio first thing?
Tom,your type “A” approach to training is evident all through your writings. It’s really impressive and also a motivational reminder for those of us who love fitness but may not be as regimented.thanks for posting this!Jes