Why other training logs suck

Posted by Otto Hammersmith, at Friday, August 22 2008

I wanted to explain why this site and these training logs exist in the first place.

Other training logs suck. Really bad, too.

Have you seen them? Have you used them?

Wait a second, let me take a step back. Not all training logs suck. The only other one I’ve used that hasn’t sucked is a simple spiral bound notebook. Actually, that was probably the first time I recognized what I was doing and started to systemize it. So you could say that my first spiral bound notebook training log really is just version 0.001 of the Werkit training logs.

Anyway, back to the point at hand. Let me take the New Rules of Lifting as an example to pick on.

NROL training log

It’s a grid. That’s all. It’s not actually most useful for the person doing the workouts, because it’s designed by the person who’s job it is to look at the results of the whole plan. Simple as that. No insidious reason, it was just designed by the wrong person.

Really at it’s most basic level, a workout is just a checklist. You say “I’m here to workout, I’m going to do 1, 2, 3, 4 and done.” Then you go home.

This is my checklist for my next workout.

My next training log

So what makes this a good checklist? Nifty big boxes that just beg you to check them off. Yup, got that.

A description of what you’re going to do. Full sentences with subjects and verbs and everything. Not “grocery store”, but “go grocery shopping” and an actual list of things to buy. That’s what makes a checklist look at you and scream “DO ME!” Yup, got that, too. Sure there’s implicit verbs, but I’ve got essentially “squat 140 pounds 15 times and do that twice” on my next workout log. How could I not get that done?

The rest is just helpful visual cues and other aesthetics.

For example, the simple visual cue that exercises one and two on your checklist are actually an alternating set. Just one checkbox for the two. How simple is that?

In the end the real reason is to make logging my workouts as frictionless as possible. Yet, to still capture all the useful information necessary to make a grid that’s helpful for reviewing 12 weeks of hard work.

Tags: nrol, why