We often talk about healthy foods to eat, or great exercise tips. Let’s not forget about tracking your progress.
If you truly want to reinvent your body, it is just as important to plan out your weight loss routine as it is to go through with it. Having an exercise log or workout journal can be a great aid to your weight-loss dreams because they’ll help you track your progress.
If you’re the type who measures their waists every day or weighs on the scales every ,morning then a training log is perfect for you, so you can keep track of your progress in a positive way.
Setting a personal goal is kind of like competing with yourself, so reaching new goals of weight loss can be fun, challenging, and fulfilling.
Whether you’re lifting weights, doing cardio, or combining both, you can create your own log or purchase one of the many training diaries available at book stores nationwide. If you choose to buy one, you can get great tips from professionals about workouts, self motivation, and personal goals.
If you’ve decided to create your own journal, you’ll want to first determine if it’s for weight training or for cardiovascular exercise. Let’s assume for now that you’re going with a weight routine because you’re aware of the fact that lifting weights allows your metabolism to be boosted at all hours of the day, allowing you to shed fat even when resting.As you know, these are definitely some ways that you can shed weight quickly.
You want about five or six lines on your paper, and the first column should be longer than the others. This is where you’ll put in the name of the exercise (Bench Press, Upright Row, etc.).
The next column is for listing what type of equipment you’ll be using for your routine. It’s important to always keep track of the weight to ensure that you’re getting stronger and fitter.
The weight should increase a little bit every week due to expanding muscle mass. If your weight stays the same after a couple of weeks then you need to try something else.
The next three or more columns should be used to document the amount of repetitions for each set you’ve performed. You may wish to add another long column for any comments or notes having to do with the workout or exercise.
The resulting chart will represent one day of weightlifting and you can recreate the basic template for each additional workout and then compare them against one another to ensure that progress is truly being made.
If you’re doing a journal for cardiovascular activity, you’ll first have to decide which kind of cardio you’re performing. Let’s suppose you’re running.
You’ll need to make a chart similar to the weightlifting log except that you’ll require far less paper. Since you’re only recording the time and mileage of a run you can keep using the same sheet of paper for weeks.
Your first column should be for the date, so it doesn’t have to take up too much space. The one next to it can be either the length of time you ran for or the distance.
Whichever one you didn’t use first should logically follow and, if you have a caloric indicator handy, you can even log the amount of calories you’ve burned.
Naturally you can follow this same set-up for many other cardio exercises like stationary cycling, rowing, and elliptical training, just to name a few.
If you make sure that you know the right healthy foods to eat and exercise, your training log will always look great.