Sometimes the worst part of the workout is the tracking. It’s fussy. It’s boring. It usually needs to be done while we’re tired and sweaty and distracted. There are a couple of ways of dealing with this.
One is: skip it. I hate to break it to my fellow achiever-minded folks, but there is no great gradebook in the sky. God is not going to conduct a notebook check, even if every middle- and high-school teacher led us to think it was inevitable. If writing down the details of a weight workout or the parameters for a spin session or even the very fact that we did in fact work out seems like too much trouble, that’s fine.
But. (Of course there is a but.)
Maybe it’s worth doing if we can keep it simple. (I’ll talk to those of us who love our complicated systems and colored pens and boxes to tick in tomorrow’s post.)
How simple our system can be depends on what our goals are. If all we want is a little accountability, we can get that from a basic checkbox on our normal to-do list or calendar. Or we can rely on our Wristy Overlords (aka fitness trackers) to do it for us; once our little circles are complete, we’re done.
If we are the kind of folks who are motivated by making progress, we might want to track a few more things. It doesn’t have to be a huge burden. If, say, once a month we do a benchmark workout and record stuff like how long it took, what weights we used, how we felt, what speed or incline we used on the treadmill, we can see whether or not we’re moving toward our goals. (A caveat: some days we just aren’t as strong as others, even if we are generally improving. We need to avoid attaching too much emphasis to any one snapshot and check out our general trends.)
Another option: we can take a literal snapshot of our bodies, front and side view, to see how our bodies are changing.
Let me know what happens if you try!
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