Your Training Log - Part 2: How to Keep One

(If you like, you can scroll down to the end of this article and watch a video on this topic. This article is a Blast from the Past article originally posted on 09/04/20.)

In last week’s article, Your Training Log - Part 1: Just Do It, we covered the importance of keeping a training log. Now that you’re utterly and forever convinced of the wisdom of keeping a training log, let’s discuss how to keep one. Your log needs to contain several basic elements organized in a readable fashion, but it’s not a complicated process. Grab a plain old composition notebook, and let’s get started.

First, give each week its own page. We tend to think and plan in these chunks called weeks anyway, so it makes sense to organize our training log this way as well. If you complete all your training for a given week and you have extra space at the bottom of the page, don’t be tempted to start another week on the same page. Again, each week gets its own page - no matter what - so start a new page every time you start a new week. The blank space on the preceding page will remind you that you didn’t do your job last week, and hopefully, this will compel you to do better this week.

At the beginning of the week, divide your new page according to the number of days you train per week. For example, if you train three days per week, you’ll divide the page into three sections (horizontally or vertically - either will work). You can and will fit three or four days of training (even five!) onto one page, and allocating a specific amount of space to each day at the beginning of the week will ensure that you color inside the lines.

When training, label each lift, e.g., squat, press, deadlift, snatch, etc. Abbreviations are fine, but you need to be able to go back and understand what you’re written, so don’t get too clever there, Copernicus.

Next, write the goal - the prescription - for the lift you’re about to perform. If you’re planning to squat three sets of five reps for your work sets today, then simply write “3 x 5.” After that, write out your warm-ups and your work sets (remember, reps are always written second), and finally, write out what you’re going to lift next time. Here’s an example:

Squat
3 x 5 Today’s goal
----------
45 x 5 x 2
95 x 5 x 1
135 x 3 x 1 Warm-up sets
185 x 2 x 1
215 x 1 x 1
----------
240 x 5 x 3 Work sets
Next: 245

If you’re only doing one set of something, the “1” for the number of sets is optional (remember multiplying by “1” in school?), so you can leave that part out if you like. In that case, it looks like this:

Squat
3 x 5 Today’s goal
----------
45 x 5 x 2
95 x 5
135 x 3 Warm-up sets
185 x 2
215 x 1
----------
240 x 5 x 3 Work sets
Next: 245

Beyond this, you’ll also want to write down cues that you’re using or will use next time (“Midfoot!”), reminders (“Next time, put belt on for last warm-up and all work sets”), and even how the training session went (“Smoked it today!”). Keeping a PR sheet somewhere in your training log is also a great idea, and perhaps we’ll cover that in a future article.

Of course, you can keep a training log anyway you want to, but this is my article, so you’re getting my recommendations. If you’d like to do it differently, that’s fine . . . just don’t tell me.

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