What I tried this week: Keeping a fitness journal

Recently, I was at the physiotherapist and he was asking about my training a number of weeks prior. I pulled out the antiquated Moleskin planner where I track everything from events, appointments, meetings and training and squinted to find what particular track workout he was referencing.

I have a system that works well for me, despite the fact that it is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack for anyone else looking on. I write my daily workouts alongside all my other commitments on a given day and then use a highlighter to gauge how I am feeling. Green means I had a great workout, orange means fatigue or a sub-par workout and pink means it was the worst workout of the week. I find it is a great way to track my health, for instance, if I see a lot of orange in a particular week, I could be fast tracking towards injury or burnout. It’s not a fitness journal per say, but the story of my life, including the athletic parts.

Although it worked for me, I always like to think there is room for improvement in the way I do things. For the sake of organization, I decided to try a different approach and started using a fitness journal. I found an unused notebook and began to diligently record my workouts and any unusual pains or fatigue I was noticing, along with a bit more of a detailed description of the workout and statistics. This worked well until I began leaving it in my gym bag and couldn’t be bothered to retrieve it. I kept this record approximately a week and because I didn’t have it with me throughout the day, I found it difficult to be consistent with it.

I moved on to the online approach and began using Strava and the platform of whatever watch I was wearing at the time, such as Polar Flow. I like the community approach of the Strava website with people giving you online kudos for your workouts, leaving you wanting to upload your efforts so people can give you a virtual pat on the back. I also felt a certain amount of pressure from my fellow athletes as they would comment on heart rate, times and routes. There is the option to make my workouts private, but I like the support that making it public offers. This option is by far the most detailed tracking option as it hosts all the statistics from your workout fed from your watch, however it only works for the workouts you log wearing the watch. For the workouts that you don’t track, you have the option to enter them manually.

After a couple weeks, I found myself returning back to my tried, true and battered notebook ways and incorporating a hybrid of online and written tracking. I like to have all my stats on Strava to check back on progress week to week, but I love physically writing down workouts as well. Tracking my workouts is important to ensure that I am staying on track with my training and steering clear of injury. I think everyone has a different system, but as long as you land on one that you are able to update consistently, it doesn’t matter where you do it.