Why we need to take notes

As we all know, 1/12 of the year just passed us. I think we all need to ask ourselves this question: where are we with regards to our new year resolutions? With our performance this past month, will we really be able to reach the goals, fitness related or not, that we've set for this year?

If you said no, or are reading up till here without being able to decidedly answer a "yes", then you are probably among those who need to reasess the measures you have in place to help you be able to reach your goals.

For this purpose I'd like to share to you a helpful tool that I have used effectively for more than a year now: a notebook. At school and work, we read textbooks, manuals, presentations, take down (or photocopy someone else's) notes. Without these things, it will be almost impossible to

track, analyze, and improve on previous work. Why not have the same for our personal

activities? Documentation is essential for clarity.

For fitness and athletic training, recording your workouts and performance is a great aid to ensuring that your are able to stick to your programs, and see if your training is effective for you. You will be able to compare your performance today with that from a few weeks, months, or years ago. You will be able to record your personal bests. These personal bests and past performances, now become targets that you have to surpass. You become more accountable to yourself.

A page from my workout log from 2009. Smudged and barely legible, but did it's job well.

Incidentally, this is also a big reason why the conditioning workouts that I post here on the blog have at least 1 performance-dependent variable, mostly either volume (sets x reps) or time. This way, even with bodyweight exercises you are still able to measure your performance and compare with other times you did those same workouts.

As you fill in your notebook with more workdays and gather more information on your performance, you'll also be more able to control the elements of your training to suit your needs. You'll be able to clearly see your rate of improvement, analyze if you're starting to plateau or overtrain, then make adjustments to improve at your optimum rate and minimize injury.

I'd suggest even putting there your food intake and the amount of rest you had prior to your workouts or training sessions, so that you can correlate those with your performance as well.

You can be as detailed as you want, as long as you don't get lost in it. You also can do it as concisely as just jotting down "ran 3km in 26 minutes this morning, took it easy because I had a late night". As long as you are able to keep track of your performance, it will still help you stay honest and realistic with your training.