Your Training Log is Your GPS

The raw truth is that your training log can make you a real success in the gym.  Another raw truth is that only a dedicated few will use this very simple method for muscle gains.  Building muscle, for most people, is an uncharted path.  Having a journal to make notes of your journey can actually pave the way to new and big muscle gains.  Let’s face it, most of us will use a travel app on our iPhone’s or a GPS if we plan to travel to a new and unfamiliar area.  Why should your muscle gain quest be any different?

Your Training Log is Your Playbook to Muscle Gains

A training log clearly shows what works and what doesn’t.  It will show if you pulled a muscle or got an injury.  If you ever have any questions about your body, muscles, strength, or injury, your journal is your playbook.  Without a personal training log tracking your lifts, you will just keep running around in circles.  The final outcome of failing to log your training is you never really make the gains you could.

You can improve your progress by a whopping 60-80% simply by keeping a lifting log.   In addition, journaling your lifts can boost your strength gains enormously when combined with progressive overload!  You won’t see changes in just a week, but give it 4-6 weeks and assess your physique again.   Also, go back in your log and notice your strength increase and muscle gain.

If you don’t see or feel changes after 4-6 weeks of logging your lifts, then simply go back and review your training.  If you aren’t getting the chest growth you want, then you know to tweak your chest training by viewing your training log.  Same goes for the rest of your muscle groups.

How to Develop Your Training Log

You need a decent training split first.   Choose a training split that allows for each muscle group to be trained once a week, allowing for at least 2 rest days during the week.  More rest days are better.   Once you have your training split written down, hit the gym.

Start by writing at the top of your log which muscle groups you will be targeting.  Be sure to add the day and date.  Now you are set.  Nothing worth having comes easy.  If you really want to get those noticeable muscle and strength gains, you have to get detailed in your journaling.  Failing to note accurate numbers will just keep you at square one.   Each and every rep needs to be counted.  Thinking you can keep track in your head is nonsense.  And if that’s your technique for gains, you may as well join the aerobics class.

If you are training chest and biceps, start with your chest workout.  Write down the 3 chest exercises you will be doing.  Write down the poundage you used, the number of reps, and number of sets.  Note which rep you started feeling muscle fatigue.  Make a note if you included any training principles such as drop set, tri-sets, super sets, etc.

With such precise information at your fingertips, you know exactly how to start your next workout for maximum results.  In addition, you have your training history to build on each and every training session.  Advancing every workout is the recipe for muscle and strength gains.  How do you advance efficiently?  You use a training log.

How to Get a Jump Start

You can get an amazing jump start with logging and muscle gains by hiring a personal trainer.  A quality personal trainer will design a workout around your needs, tweak it as necessary, watch your form, and log every damn rep.   That trainer also knows how to go back into the log and adjust your current or future workouts for maximum gains.  Taking this small step can save you a lot of time, money, and frustration in the long run.  It will get you started on the right foot so you can continually grow from there.

Dietary Log

You can really power your training and physique through the roof by keeping a nutritional log, too.  If one of your goals is fat loss, this log is critical.  This works for clean muscle gains as well.  In your diet log you need to put the day and date at the top of the page.  These are your headers.  List every meal and the time you ate it.  List every calorie and macronutrient.  Leave a space for totaling each.

This diet journal also serves are a make-you or break-you platform.  Without a dietary log you are just spitting in the wind.  You may gain or lose fat or muscle.  Who knows.  When you do use a food log, you can keep track of every thing you put in your mouth.   When you don’t lose fat or gain muscle, you can review your diet log and see why and fix that area.  It’s a fact, tracking logs are fool-proof if you use them wisely.