Workout Journal - Logging and Tracking
Workout planner, workout tracker and workout journal all in one.
There are multiple components to a successful training regime and they all lead back to having an effective workout journal. A place to plan, a place to track progress, a place to analyse and a place to adjust and improve. Grow’s workout and tracking allows you to develop your workout program including workout structure, exercises you plan to perform, sets and reps. Once created, you can plan the days you will perform each workout, then when you’re in the gym run your workouts and stay on top of your plan. Later you can analyse your workout so you can improve.
Some of the greatest bodybuilders of all time, such as 6x Mr Olympia Dorian Yates insist a workout journal is one of, if not the most important tool a bodybuilder needs for success. You will find countless places around the Internet where he discusses this, including his 2019 The Perfect Workout article in Muscular Development:
In addition to writing down all my workouts, I entered my meals and even my energy levels and moods. Every so often I would go back and study these pages, looking for trends. If I noticed that something was producing results, I kept it. If something else didn’t seem to be effective, I discarded it. This allowed me to gain a much better understanding of the various foods, exercises, techniques and so on that my particular body responded best to, so I could fine-tune my entire program.
Grow works on this exact principle. Plan, track and improve, by creating an all-encompassing workout journal.
Free weight exercises, machine exercises, cardio or entire gyms.
All weight training workouts are made up of exercises, be they free weights, machines, bands, bodyweight, cardio or some other type of exercise. Grow lets you create any type of exercise you like and track them for improvement.
Built into the app, Grow provides dozens of free weight, machine and cardio exercises to help you develop your program. If there are additional exercises that aren’t included, you can easily create them in a matter of seconds.
If you happen to train at Riley’s Gym in Seven Hills, Australia, or at Doherty’s Gym in the Melbourn CBD, Australia, every piece of equipment is already available in the app. If you run a gym and want your gym added to Grow, drop me an email.
Workout creation and re-use.
While Grow aims to be your perfect workout journal and tracker, a core tenant of its design is to make your life simpler. Create your workouts once then re-use them with a single click.
You can sit down outside the gym and create your workout plan, then once in the gym, run that workout. Next time you do the same workout, Grow will automatically create a copy with all your exercises, sets, weights and reps ready to go. You will see exactly what you did the last workout, what your PR is and when you last set it, so you always know what you need to do to improve.
It's almost impossible to remember every set, weight, and rep you did last time you were in the gym training the same body part, so how do you know what you need to do to go that one step further? Did you do 100kgs for 8 reps? Or was it 97.5kgs for 9 reps? Did your training partner help you with 2 or 3 forced reps? With workout tracking, you KNOW you did 100kgs for 8 reps so this time you’re going to get 9 or 10 reps!
Spend time and go back through your past workouts to analyse and assess your progress. When viewing a workout you can go back and see past versions of that workout, see how you are progressing and decide what needs to be tweaked or changed to keep on improving.
Workout, rest and cardio timers.
I like to keep track of a lot of different pieces of data to make sure I'm always improving. It’s why Grow has three different timers built into its workouts.
- There is an overall workout timer so you can keep track of how long your workouts are.
- There is a rest timer you can use between sets to make sure you aren't resting too long and losing intensity, and
- There is a cardio timer for easily tracking your cardio exercises.
The rest timer is one I’ve found critical over the years to ensure intensity doesn’t drop. It's very easy to lose time between sets when you’re tired, when you’re pushing PR’s or when your cute training partner distracts you. (I can say that without being creepy as my training partner is my wife!) I also see a lot of people distracted by their phones in the gym and it’s not cause they are tracking their workouts in their logbook. 90% of the time it's social media. The rest timer will alert you when it's time for your next set. It will alert you audibly, and also with a pop-up on your phone, so even if you flick to Instagram Grow will let you know to get back to it!
Workout tracking and reporting.
There are a lot of different ways to make sure you improve workout on workout. Increase reps, increased sets, increased intensity, less rest between sets. The list goes on. Grow helps you track and report on everything so you stay on track.
Over the years one of the things I've noticed is if you don't keep an eye on it, it's easy to drop your intensity, especially through longer rest time between sets and overall workout length. This is why I implemented the timers I talked about above. All workouts provide statistical data for that workout, along with the previous workout so you can compare, assess changes and improve. This includes workout volume, length or cardio, overall intensity and even down to workout volume and set changes per body part trained!
Workout log book.
Keeping a workout log isn’t just about exercises, weights, sets and reps. It's about other information that you may need to write down that will help you improve.
Grow lets you log notes to exercises, but you can also record notes down to each individual set in your workout. I’ve used these notes extensively over the years and they really help when you go back to look at the last workout to assess and make sure you are improving this time around.
I’ve left notes on exercises about techniques or positioning I've used that has worked really well, down to seat height adjustments or which rack pin I've used so I get in exactly the same position each time. I use the set level notes a lot, especially on the last set of an exercise to leave myself notes for next weeks workout. For example, I may have just pushed 100kgs for 8 reps. Next time I might want to increase this to 102.5kgs or maybe I'm not ready for the weight increase and want to get to 10 reps at 100kgs first. I make notes like “up 2.5kgs” so I know next time to add weight or “get 10 reps” then I know to stay at this weight and focus on those extra reps, cause 100% I guarantee I won't remember if I don't write it down. If I come back in next time and there's no note, what should I do? Add weight, do more reps, get the same reps again? Having a workout log ensures you know what to do each time to improve.
Bodybuilding is a slow process so having even one sub-optimal workout puts you on the back foot.
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