You just finished a metcon and have taken your place in the fetal position on the ground. The last thing you’re thinking about is grabbing your phone, opening the SugarWOD app, and logging all your weights/times for the day. I get it, believe me, but I’m here to tell you why it’s super important!
Accountability – We all know that life happens. A LOT. Dragging yourself to the gym is an achievement on its own sometimes but doing the level of exercise you want/need is something entirely different. We’ve all had those days where we don’t have that extra push to go RX (even though we’ve done that weight a hundred times) or build to a “heavy” 5. This is where logging can add that extra bit of accountability. Keeping track of your workouts, holds you accountable for everything you do in the gym. Do you really want to look back and see that you put in half the effort last time? Knowing how external factors affect your workouts is also an invaluable resource!
Motivation – What a better way to keep yourself motivated than to look back over your workout logs and see the progress that you have made? Even if you feel like you’ve been attacking the same weights forever, seeing how far you have actually come can really give you that much-needed boost of motivation, enhance your confidence, and help to maintain focus on your goals.
Injury Prevention – If you take nothing else away from this article, saving yourself from injury should make you pick up your phone and start tracking your weights today. Guessing what weight you used in the past, and/or what weight you should be using today is the ultimate form of “winging it” and hoping for the best. Using the phrase “I think I did ‘x’ weight for ‘y’ reps a couple weeks ago” is a sure-fire way to set yourself up for injury. We use a lot of progressive cycles in our programming so if you guess for week 1 and you’re wrong, you’ll be guessing for weeks 2-6 (also wrong) and next thing you know you have your 1RM on the bar for a set of 5. Not ideal! This holds true for metcons as well. Knowing how many reps you can do at a certain weight or of a certain movement is crucial to making sure that you are modifying correctly and achieving the right stimulus in the safest way possible!
Goal Setting and Progress Measurement – This should be a no-brainer. Everyone has goals, whether they are as vague as “I want to get stronger” or as specific as “I want to bench 300lbs”. Without tracking our weights we have no true way of knowing how close we are to those goals. It’s that simple. Fitness is a journey, and watching that journey unfold is half the fun! The other part of goal setting and measurement is individualization. Everyone has different goals as well as different strengths & weaknesses. Having a database of where all of our weights are will allow us to see what movements we need to hit more regularly and where we need to improve. Don’t skip leg day if your bench press is more than your squat!
We put a lot of work into making sure our programming gets you the best results possible, whatever your goals may be. Get the most out of our gym and all your hard work by utilizing SugarWOD today!
