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Get a Notebook to Help Improve Your Fitness

Get a Notebook to Help Improve Your Fitness

if you are training, get a physical notebook. If you’re not training and only exercising, then you can’t complain about not getting results, not developing skills, and so on. On a more philosophical note, if we ignore goal achievement for the moment, training means you are on a journey and that you are trying to be better than who you were yesterday. It’s really about trying to become the best version of yourself that you can be. In other words, it’s growth process and a physical notebook is a symbolic reminder of this process. There’s always another page, chapter, or book waiting to be filled.

 

The Assumption – Training, Not Exercising:

There is an important assumption I have made when writing what follows below. The assumption is that when you go to a gym or take a fitness class you are training, not exercising. Exercise is physical activity with no purpose or desired outcome. Exercise lacks goals. Exercise is activity that will make you sweat, that isn’t part of any particular program, that you may be doing because you like the way it feels, but when all is said and done may not even make you healthier. Exercise doesn’t need a program or a coach because it is not directed towards any outcome.

 

Why You Should Have a Physical Notebook:

There are a variety of reasons you should have a physical notebook if you are training:

It Helps You Keep Track of Things You Learn. During each training session or class you may receive some interesting pieces of information or some tips on how you can improve. For example,

It Helps You Track The Unexpected. Maybe when you started training things didn’t go as planned that day. Maybe you weren’t feeling good from something you ate or from not getting enough sleep. You might be able to still train, but your performance might be less than ideal. If you make a note of this in your notebook, you’ll be able to refer back to it and plan future sessions properly.

It Has Nostalgic Value. There’s nothing like going through your bookcase years in the future and thumbing through your old training notebooks. The notebooks will literally have your blood, sweat and tears in the pages. It’s a great feeling.

 

workout-journal

But I Record My Training Online. A Notebook Is Redundant!:

This is a common remark nowadays because there are many online platforms for delivering workouts and tracking training data. The way I see it, just because you track your training online doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a physical notebook too.

Technology Can Fail.Servers can crash or go down for maintenance. In addition, cellular and wifi networks can go down or have connectivity/reception issues. This can make accessing your digital training information inconsistent, hard, or even impossible. If you are trying to access or upload information and you run into one of these problems, you start wasting valuable training time. Also, there’s really no guarantee that any online data is safe. So, think of your physical notebook as a fail-safe master copy.

Get a Notebook to Help Improve Your Fitness

Technology Is Slow. It is substantially quicker to jot notes down in your physical notebook compared to unlocking your phone, launching an app, finding the right place to write your notes, typing the notes in and then saving the notes. The same kind of time investment occurs when you use online tracking platforms to retrieve your information. Extra time is taken each way. And if you do intense conditioning, you certainly don’t want to be accessing your phone when you’re drenched in sweat, dazed and confused.

 

daily-workout-journal

 

For more information, head to this link: http://www.scienceforfitness.com/2017/04/26/are-you-training-get-a-notebook/

 

Here’s another resource you can look into: http://neatstrength.com/how-to-keep-a-workout-journal/

Here’s a related video on how you can improve your fitness:

So are you ready now to get a notebook and document your exercises and results?