Have you ever wondered how to track your progress at the Gym? Well, thousands do every day! So, in this article, we look at seven great ways to track progress in the gym.
We consider both modern and traditional methods and discuss each. It is important to recognise that preference may change based on the individual’s needs and exercise type. If you are thinking about looking good in a vest top and the best ways to track your progress, then read on!
Key Takeaways
- An outline of seven possible ways to track your progress in the gym.
- Highlighting the pros and cons of each method
- A summary of findings and general outcomes
Common Progress Recording Methods
- A workout journal – Despite its seemingly old-school nature, the workout journal remains a practical and popular way to track progress in the gym. Many gym enthusiasts carry small pads or notebooks, jotting down their progress in a free-form plan. They record sets, weights, and often their emotional state, providing a raw and unfiltered view of their progress.
- Pro: It can be used in almost all situations; it is simple and straightforward to record details.
- Con: There’s no visual interpretation to show projected progress or any quick way of serving data.
- Phone Note Pad – A move forward from a paper Workout Journal. Using a digital notepad on your phone is good because most gym users carry their phones with them for music and other communication while at the gym. It makes sense for them to use the notepad on their phone to record their progress.
- Pro: Digital, saved on your phone and therefore always available.
- Con: Could be more difficult to search than a notebook and has no visual reference for progress.
- With a Smart Watch – One of the most popular methods for tracking progress in the gym nowadays is smartwatches or fitness trackers, which record your calorie burn, heart rate, and body battery. This is very helpful because smartwatches typically provide you with graphs and other visual elements in the shape of an app. This method is good for tracking health progress, but it’s not as good for tracking strength progress, for example. So, a smartwatch is not the ultimate solution for gymgoers.
- Pro: Easy to use and logs your information for later scrutiny.
- Con: Can be difficult to align with some activities, such as weights and strength training, which does not include actual weight lifted.
- A personal trainer – If you have a schedule that allows you to fix times to see a personal trainer, this is a good way to track progress in the gym, using a person to motivate and encourage progress as well as being able to identify when you are ready for the next level and how quickly you can get there. A personal trainer will often provide nutritional advice alongside programs to suit you and your body type. A personal trainer is a great way to track and enhance progress in the gym. They are nearly always used by serious athletes, professionals Ocsar De La Hoya for example.
- Pro: Will push you to perform and manually track your improvements. They will also help you with nutrition and adjust your training based on your development.
- Con: Cost is the biggest limiting factor, along with availability and ensuring attendance is at the agreed-upon times.
- Equipment trackers – In modern gyms and even home gyms on modern cardio equipment, you will find equipment trackers built-in, which allow you to track progress and set certain challenges. For example, you could use a rower and move the dial up week on week to increase intensity and difficulty level. Some gym bikes, Like the exercise bikes from Mirafit, provide tracking while you work out. This is a fantastic way to keep driving your progress forward. However, it would be pertinent to choose a phone or pad to record the outcome and how you are feeling to inform any follow-up activity.
- Pro: They allow you to input your details and your goals and are typically machine-specific so that they can be more effective than a smartwatch for that particular activity.
- Con: You may still need to record performance in a book and log it onto a phone, as the information typically stays with the machine.
- Strava – Perhaps one of the fastest-growing and well-known apps, especially for running, cycling, and some cardio, is Strava. This app is free at a basic level and allows you to track limited stats. If you want to increase the amount of information you get from the app, including progress and graphs. You can pay the premium subscription. The basic version is still a useful tool. As you roughly know how you’re performing you can track and record overall performance along with your best achievements. This includes dates so you can see when you achieved it and peak performance on certain challenges.
- Pro: Broadly, you get the most amount of information you can for free, and the app allows you to track performance improvements on a basic level
- Con: It does not provide an exercise plan, and to get the most out of the app, you need a paid subscription.
- Use an App
Fitness-specific apps are a really good way to record your progress and connect with a community of people like yourself. Fitain is a new free fitness app that also includes workouts for particular types of fitness equipment. This type of app allows you to make notes, record progress, and download.
- Pro: It’s free, and it provides insights into exercise plans that support different types of equipment and workouts.
- Con: The paid version gives you the ability to contribute your own workouts and make money. This is not available in the free version.
Summary
How you choose to record your information is completely up to you. As you can see from the feedback in our article, there are pros and cons to each solution, and that solution should be chosen based on your needs in the gym. The article suggests that using a fitness app, a phone, a notepad, or a traditional workout journal will give you the best results. Other methods don’t have the longevity to show performance or do not include the necessary features for someone working out in the gym at this stage.
A workout journal could be used for all types of activity in the gym, but it will not provide health-related metrics like calorie burn or heart rate. Is ideally suited to recording weight sets or routines and how they felt
A phone notepad is like a journal. It is a great way to record activity. It will not provide health-related information such as heart rate, but it is very convenient and not easily forgotten or misplaced.
A smartwatch is a useful tool for general health, but it does not track weight sets and is more focused on improving biometrics than on gym performance goals.
A personal trainer is the ultimate motivator and progress tracker, but the main drawback is cost and availability.
Equipment trackers work well, but our silo and don’t work as well as other trackers at providing an overall perspective. You would still need some other way to record performance, such as using independent exercise machines.
Strava is a great way to record activities and calorie burn along with improvements in heart rate and other biometrics, but it does not provide a record of your incremental gains when lifting weights in the gym.
The Fitness app will provide you with a way to make notes on your performance. It’s available on your phone, which means it’s convenient and can be reflected on at any point. It also connects you with a community of people and allows you to download updates and new training regimes to suit your way or out in your physical career.
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