June marks the 5 year anniversary of my exercise journaling, actually it is more of a calendar. For the past 5 years I have created, by hand, monthly calendars to keep track of my workouts and overall physical activity. At first, one might think that keeping an exercise calendar is “obsessive” or “time consuming” or something that only an “exercise-orexic” would do, but you are wrong. My journals are extremely simple, which is why I have been able to maintain them for so long without faltering. Here let me show you what I mean.
Above is a calendar from the summer of 2011 (hence the orange and yellow ). I simply take a piece of card stock, grab a ruler and some fun markers and create my very own calendar. I chose this instead of writing it down in an organizer because the act of making the calendar each month gets me excited for a new month, and I love playing around with the different colors. I also started these calendars at a time when money was tight and spending $25 on an organizer just for exercise seemed frivolous:) But if you have a daily calendar or pre-printed one you would rather use, go for it!
So each and every day I record any physical activity I do. Now I don’t count walking up and down the stairs at work, but I would count a long dog walk or an exhausting car wash. I record each and every gym class, climbing session or run. But I always keep it simple! I don’t write down reps or sets, the only specifics I give are the type of class or the muscle group I worked out. This is important because at the end of the month I see which muscle groups I am ignoring, or which muscles are getting over-worked.
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Then possibly the most important part of the process is at the end of each day I record, on a scale from 1-10, the level of difficulty of a workout or the amount of effort I put into that day. I have to admit I have never recorded a “1″ Day, maybe if I just went for a stroll in the park with the dogs, that would qualify as a “1″ but in most cases I would take that as an OFF day. I have also had very few ‘”10″ days, for a day to qualify as a ten I would have to put forth at least 4-5 hours of intense work, like scaling some multi-pitch wall in yosemite would qualify or running a marathon, but little else. Days rated a “10″ would require rest days afterwards in most cases. I try to keep my workout in the 7-9 range. 7-9 means I am putting in a lot of effort, but I am not maxing out. For me a 5-6 is still a good workout just with moderate instead of intense effort . 2-4 is minimal effort but still actively burning calories, like washing the car, walking the dogs, or gardening and working up a sweat.
When I began this calendar I would set monthly goals, on the back of the calendar I would write that I wanted to climb at least 7 times a month, go to the gym 8 times a month, workout at home 6 times a month, and take 8 days off. Now these are just goals, they are not that important they are simply guidelines for me. Then at the end of the month you compare your goals with what you were actually able to accomplish. Setting goals can be very helpful but more importantly it should not be discouraging. If you are constantly not meeting your goals you are probably setting them too high, and if you set them too high you risk discouraging yourself and losing motivation! DONT DO THIS! It is more helpful to not set monthly goals and tell yourself I will try harder next month, than to set really difficult goals and be mad at yourself when you don’t accomplish them. This calendar should be FUN! If you lose track and forgot to write down your previous workout, just write “Forgot Oops” You are doing this for YOU, no one is watching. This also means DO NOT CHEAT! If no one is watching and you are keeping this calendar to keep yourself on track, don’t make up a workout, or record a 9 when you know it was a 6 or 7 kind of day. You would only be cheating yourself, it is okay to fall behind, it is okay to slack off, just hold yourself accountable and start fresh tomorrow or next week or the following month!For example is March of 2010 I was in charge of throwing a fundraiser. I had so much going on that I did not have time for the gym, I seriously did not lift a weight for 2 weeks straight. When the fundraiser was over and I was finally back to my old schedule, I took a look at my March exercise calendar and saw most of it blank. In the blank space I wrote “Lost track because of fundraiser” across the whole thing, and started on my April calendar. Sometimes life tells us what is important, and sometimes we tell life what is important, and in this case I had to put aside my love of exercise and activity and really truly focus all of my energy on this important event. I did not get really far off track, I did not get fat, I did not even weigh myself, I simply started April like I would have if everything had been perfect in March. Exercise is a way of life, it is not a trend we get into for a couple of weeks and then get over. It takes hard work and dedication like most everything worth accomplishing. So don’t let a little set-back erase all of your hard work or passion, just pick up where you left off and tell yourself, “tomorrow will be different.”
