Exercise Training Diary and Step by Step Instructions

As the saying goes “failing to plan, is planning to fail.” Keeping track of your exercise is crucial to keep making progress, to see what works, what doesn’t work, keep making increases, keeping focus, improving your stick-ability in the gym, and to look back to see what progress you have made, for even more motivation. That’s why I have designed this 5 workout training diary for you to download, for free. I have personally been logging my workouts down for the past five years and have made massive progress for doing so. The training log I have designed is for resistance work only, which means working out with dumbbells, barbells, kettle bells, medicine balls, club bells, dyna bands, and bodyweight type exercises. This dairy is not designed for cardiovascular based exercises. As you will see from the diary, when you download it, it’s divided into five sections for each workout. With a reps/set column. Here you would write in something like 3×10 or 5×5 depending on what you are training for. In the the second column, which is titled “weight”, here you simply write in the weight that you have lifted, be it, in pounds (lbs) or kilograms (kg). This should be increasing over time if you want to be making progress. In the boxes where there is a number, you put in the date, time, and length of your workout. So it would look something like this: 25/7/10, 10.30a.m, 45mins. Doing this, you can see what’s the optimal time of day to train. And to see what’s the ideal workout time, for you, to get maximum results. On the far left hand side of the diary is where you write in the exercises you have chosen to do, for your goals and objectives. Next to that you have a “set up” column. You can use this to remind yourself how to set up the exercise. For example, if you have “bench press” for your first exercise, you may have “bench at 45 degrees” in the set up column. At the bottom left hand side, you have a goals and objectives box. Here you write in what you are trying to achieve with your training. For example, it may look like this: - “Add 10kg to bench press in 10 weeks” _ ”Put on 2kg of muscle by Christmas” Lastly at the bottom of each workout column is the “how did my workout go” box. Here you can write in how your workouts went, for example, it may look something like this “training when t well, added 2.5kg on squat” or “had to cut back on sets due to training too late in the day”. You can add in a maximum of 12 exercises only, per sheet. If your training sessions only have 5 or 6 exercises you can divided to sheet into two half by drawing a thick line across the middle, then write workout A and B on the out side of the training diary, on the left hand margin. This way you can save paper. I recommend printing off a dozen or so of these diaries, using the double sided printing option on your printer, to save even more paper and bounding them together, making a small booklet. Here is a small example of what your diary may look like, when its filled out. More on frequency of training Frequency means how often you should be doing your exercises. This can vary, depending on what exercises you are doing, what your goals are and what you need to work on in particular. You might only be able to do your training every 3-4 days, depending upon your body’s own ability to recover from weight training. Always remember that less is more, when it comes to training. You should never do more than your body is capable of doing. You should start at a light and easy level, gradually building up the variables such as number of repetitions, speed, weight and time spent on the exercises you choose. In this way, you will see real progress over the weeks and months. You should use intelligent trial and error. If an exercise is not working for you, or you have discomfort doing it, you should stop and try something else. If an exercise is working for you, stick with it, and drive it into the ground!