USEFUL: The Most Powerful Tool in your Gym Bag.

Not only will your workout journal keep you on the straight and narrow during your lifting career it can also save you from wasting months or even years of your training life. During one phase of strength training for several months trying a new program I had begun to get progressively weaker. I couldn’t understand why weights that I had used 6 months earlier now seemed to be getting heavier and heavier with each workout.

I was sleeping enough. I was eating enough. I was resting enough between workouts. Sure my stress levels were a little higher than normal but nothing seemed to be adding up. I was definitely getting weaker as each week passed and even worse – I had no idea why. It wasn’t until I looked at one of my notebooks that I realized working with weights at or above 90% of my one rep max can lead to accommodation and a sort of deconditioning. Weights at that level for weeks on end had had the reverse effect that I wanted. I put in a quick google search and came to the work of Louis Simmons and his theories on power lifting based primarily on the work of the Soviets in their Olympic weight lifting and his own personal experience as a competitive power lifter. This was the first big epiphany I had about how important keeping a notebook really was. Without being able to go back and physically reread all of my own notes I would never have stumbled upon that pattern.