Should You Use a Training Log?
Serious results require serious action. Here are the keys to progress. Now go unlock its doors.
Men,
Should you be tracking your working weights and reps on each exercise you do week to week?
Absolutely, you should.
When newbies first join I don’t typically stress tracking their performance as much since the focus should be more on things like learning proper technique, developing the habit of showing up consistently, and learning how to apply effort and intensity into their workouts.
When you are brand new to strength training, or coming back from a lay off, your body needs a little time to get acclimated to high intensity training so it’s best to stop sets shy of failure by a couple reps and gradually push the intensity.
Trying to pick things back up exactly where you left of if significant time has passed is one of the most common ways guys will snap themselves up.
The same goes for when a brand new exercise is introduced.
The first week of a new training block should just be an acclimation phase.
If an exercise shows up that you haven’t done in a while, a general guideline is to refer to your training journal and cut about 20% off of your top set working weight, allow the motor re-learning to take place, and then resume your progressive overload over the course of the block.
If you have been hitting it hard consistently, then you have every reason to believe that you are probably stronger, it’s just a matter of a couple weeks to re-develop those neuropathways and you will be on your way to new PR’s shortly.
If you don’t track your top sets at all, I guarantee you are leaving gains on the table.
I see it happen all the time.
In fact I just saw it this week.
A guy who wasn’t really tracking his performance began doing so about a month ago and his results have skyrocketed.
This is how a man’s mind works -
If you have no previous standard to beat, you are rarely going to push yourself hard enough to improve.
If you refer back to your performance a couple weeks ago and your log book says that you did 7 pull ups with 25 pounds around your waist, and you have been eating well and training hard, and it’s go time for pull ups, you are going to make damn sure you go for at least 8 reps this time.
This is the best measurement we have for mechanically loading our muscles progressively over time.
If you do more weight than last time or more reps with the same weight, you have gotten stronger.
And if a muscle gets stronger it means it is getting bigger as well (once all the neurological adaptations have taken place).
There is no training for size versus training for strength.
There is only strength.
That is why we are San Benito Strength, not San Benito Strength and Size.
This is another area where so much of the fitness industry is in error.
You don’t need to understand much science to understand that our bodies are not going to adapt and transform for aesthetic purposes.
Your body is not going to be like, “you know the way this guy is lifting this weight, and the pump he is giving me with this rep range, he must really want big bigger biceps for the beach, and because that’s what he wants lets give him those bigger biceps but be sure to make that new muscle tissue useless with no capacity for strength.”
Think about how stupid that is.
Your body doesn’t care whether or not you want bigger muscles for the beach or Instagram or whatever else your intentions might be.
Your muscles only understand mechanical stress.
And if more mechanical stress is being placed on a targeted muscle than was placed on it last time, and if your nutrition and recovery are not in the toilet, a positive physiological adaptation is going to take place.
Specifically, the muscle is going to increase in size to make room for new contractile proteins to be added.
Muscles get bigger as a side effect of getting stronger.
This is why I simply say go hard.
How hard?
Harder than last time.
How do you know how hard you went last time?
By tracking your top sets of each exercise in a logbook and monitoring it to ensure this process is taking place over time.
Of course this also requires patience.
Past newbie stages, muscle growth is a slow process and it’s not always going to take place week to week.
It gets slower and slower as you begin to reach your genetic potential.
How do you know when you’ve reached your genetic potential?
You don’t know and you don’t ever worry about it.
Just like you don’t worry about the genetics of others or who’s on steroids and who’s natty, or who’s making how much money, etc.
You worry about yourself.
Training is an art form of self-improvement.
It’s for comparing the man you are today with the man you were yesterday, at least physically speaking.
But of course there is a lot of carry over to mental and emotional well-being also.
And the best method for comparison is to look at your training log.
Specifically, here’s the keys to progress:
Form comes first. It is important to standardize your reps - to the highest standard. Excellence of execution, every rep should be identical. If you add weight from last week but to do so you used momentum or started letting gravity lower it instead of your own passive muscle tension, then you actually loaded your muscles less even though you loaded more weight on the bar or machine. Technique must stay on point.
Next, start adding reps to a weight on your top set using the prescribed rep ranges for each exercise.
So if the rep range prescribed is 6 to 9, start with a weight you think you can get in that range based on past performance and based on how your ramp up sets are feeling. That’s what ramp up sets are for - to help you decide on what weight to use for work sets. You become better at this with experience.
Push your work set to failure or at least very close to failure to ensure you get enough “effective reps” in. Effective reps are the reps closest to task failure, each rep towards failure progressively increasing in effectiveness.
If you got 7 or 8 reps, stay with that weight the following week and try and get 9.
If you get 9 or more (ALWAYS do more if you can), then add a couple pounds the following week and start the process again.
Again, it is ok to go beyond the prescribed rep range if you have the strength, it just means that you need to go heavier next time to try and bring yourself into the targeted range.
And yes, some rep ranges are more efficient than others, that’s why they are prescribed.
Now something that I do and recommend sometimes as advice -
Once I have hit the top number on a targeted rep range, I will often stay with that same weight for one more workout and re-visit the first form of progressive overload -excellence of execution.
So I will do a “clean up” week, where I make sure I am performing every rep perfectly and I own that weight before moving up.
I will make a note in my logbook if I felt like I rushed a couple reps or if I broke form whatsoever, or if I feel like I can safely increase my range of motion with the exercise, and I will make improvements the following workout before adding load.
If you are not currently tracking your top work sets, I strongly recommend giving it a try.
The gains we’ve been seeing with some of these guys has been phenomenal.
Here’s Steve repping a plate on dips at 61 years of age. He actually did a plate and a quarter the following week.
Train Hard!