Hello, dear friends! My name is Ryan Hager, and today I decided to talk to you about an essential tool for your training sessions: the training journal! Many beginners, especially those new to lifting weights, mistakenly believe that recording their results in a notebook is a waste of time. However, I’m here to explain why this is a fundamentally wrong belief and how achieving significant progress in your workouts is nearly impossible without keeping track of your results.
Every goal must first be written down on paper; otherwise, it’s just a dream, not a goal. What’s the difference between a dream and a goal? A dream lacks a plan for realization. For example, someone might say, “I want to be happy!” But what does “being happy” really mean?
For one person, it might mean finding a loved one; for another, it could be buying an expensive car; and for a third, it might mean losing 20 kilograms. There’s no specific plan in any of these.
Even if someone desires a car, an apartment, or a vacation, these remain mere dreams until they create a plan to achieve them! When a dream has a specific plan of action written on paper, it becomes a goal! This is clear. Let’s move on.
The more detailed the goal, with points and subpoints, the clearer you’ll be about what needs to be done at a certain time (day, week, month, etc.)! Where am I going with this?
The fact is, for someone who wants to build big muscles, it’s crucial to regularly increase the load from workout to workout. Let me explain why.
The body increases muscle size when it experiences an unfamiliar load. Otherwise, there’s no benefit for it to do so! Muscles consume a significant amount of energy, even when at rest.
Our ancestors had to conserve energy to survive because food was often scarce. Even though we no longer face such issues with food, the body continues to conserve energy.
If your muscles can handle the current level of load, they have no reason to grow. If you continue working with the same weights year after year, your muscles will be just the right size to handle those weights—no more, no less!
So, the only way to increase your muscle size is to get stronger! You might ask, “But how do I get stronger? How do I do that if I can only bench press 60 kg for 3 sets of 10 reps?” This is where you need a workout journal!
Why a Workout Journal is Necessary
Many beginner bodybuilders think they can remember everything they need to. So, they see no point in writing anything down. This is completely wrong! Trust me, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to remember every set, every weight, and every number of reps!
Yes, you might be able to remember the stats from your last workout, but will you remember the one before that? Or the workout from a month or two ago?
Without diligently recording everything in a workout journal, you’ll be spinning your wheels! If your working weights don’t increase, your muscles have no reason to grow because they’re already handling the load!
Why else should you record your workouts? There’s a concept in bodybuilding called supercompensation. Training actually breaks down muscle. Muscles don’t grow during a workout—they grow afterward, during recovery.
Each muscle has its own recovery time since each muscle group differs in size, etc. After taking a destructive load, muscles become slightly stronger and bigger once they’ve recovered. This process is known as supercompensation.
It’s at this point that you need to give your muscles another dose of load so they can again increase in size and strength. How can you remember this when each muscle recovers at different times?
The answer is simple—record all your results on paper!
This is what my workout journal looks like. As you can see, there’s nothing complicated about it! Just a notebook where I’ve written down everything I need to know for further linear (or cyclical) progression in my performance. I trained in the gym for 2.5 years without a workout journal.
My friends and I would go to the gym and do the same thing workout after workout. My muscles hardly grew. I just “leaned out,” but my muscle size didn’t increase. At that time, I didn’t yet understand the importance of progressive overload!
“WHY AREN’T MY MUSCLES GROWING?” I thought. But why would they grow? My muscles were perfectly handling the load I was giving them, and increasing muscle size would be an unnecessary energy expense for our bodies!
It’s not advantageous for the body! Your body maintains just enough muscle for you to carry out your daily activities. For example, if you only do push-ups at home, your body will maintain just enough muscle for that activity.
You might be able to do 30, 40, 100, 200 push-ups, but your muscles won’t grow just by increasing the number of repetitions! The muscle needs to work for 15 to 30 seconds, and then it should reach muscle failure. Otherwise, you’re not giving the muscle enough load.
Here’s what’s recorded in my journal:
- What I’m training (Legs, Chest/Arms, Back/Shoulders)
- The date
- The exercise
- The number of sets (including warm-ups)
- The number of reps
If you can, you can even record more details. For example, you could note the rest time between sets, the time your muscles are under tension, or even when you last ate before the workout.
This will get you to your goal even faster, but in the beginning of your training, and generally in the first year or year and a half, I wouldn’t recommend recording too much unnecessary information.
Your goal is to constantly progress in all aspects and develop the habit of writing everything down! Without this, you’ll be stuck in the same place year after year. If you’re going to the gym, your journal should always be with you!
Increasing the volume of work done What is bodybuilding? Or rather, what is it about? Someone who’s not very knowledgeable might say with a hint of sarcasm: “broiler weight,” “non-functional muscles,” “you don’t need muscles to know how to fight,” and so on. Let’s break it down.
Our muscles can perform various types of work and have different properties. Depending on what attribute you’re training, you’ll get a corresponding result.
Our muscles can have incredible endurance, which is why people run, do pull-ups, work with their own body weight, and so on. Through high-repetition, high-intensity training, this muscle quality known as endurance is developed!
Runners on long distances and CrossFit athletes possess very high endurance! But can an endurance athlete lift huge weights just because they can do 100 pull-ups, 500 push-ups, or run 15 km without getting winded? The answer is predictable. Their training isn’t focused on developing another attribute—strength.
Athletes like powerlifters possess tremendous strength! They lift and press massive weights. The name of the sport itself explains it: Powerlifting—from the “power” (strength) and “lift” (to lift). Their goal is to lift the heaviest possible weight for 1-2 reps (in training, they typically work up to 6 reps), aiming to increase their one-rep max. But could a powerlifter run a five-kilometer race without much effort? I highly doubt it.
So, what do bodybuilders train for?
Bodybuilders typically work within the range of 6-12 repetitions per set, and the total tonnage they lift in a training session often exceeds that of a powerlifter. It’s simple math.
A powerlifter might lift 200 kg for 3-6 reps and complete 5 sets in 15 minutes (with an average of 3 minutes rest between sets).
A bodybuilder might lift 120-130 kg for 6-12 reps and complete 10-15 sets in the same amount of time (with about 1-1.5 minutes of rest between sets).
This means that the bodybuilder will perform a greater volume of work within the same time frame. This quality of muscle performance is known as work capacity, meaning the ability of muscles to perform a certain amount of work over a period of time. Bodybuilders can handle a very large volume of work!
This is why a bodybuilder might not be able to do 40-50 pull-ups, and their max weight on the bar might be less than that of a powerlifter. They are training a different muscle quality!
So, to increase muscle growth, we need to increase the volume of muscle work! But remembering all the details is simply impossible. That’s why it’s so important to record the exact number of repetitions in sets, the weight on the bar, each training session, and so on.
This is why keeping track of everything is crucial! Each of your workouts will have a clear goal, and you’ll know exactly what you need to do.
Training Journal: How to Start Progressing
Let’s return to the question: “How can I increase the weight if I can only lift 60 kg for 3 sets of 10 reps?” There’s a wonderful saying:
“It’s not how slow you go that matters, but that you don’t stop moving!”
Firstly, at the very beginning of your training, after you’ve learned how to properly contract your muscles (for at least 2-3 months), you absolutely need to start a workout journal!
Yes, yes! I might have already annoyed you by mentioning this, but without it, you won’t achieve the main thing needed for muscle growth – progressive overload!
Next, we begin increasing the weight while working within the 6-12 rep range, performing 3-4 sets per exercise (I personally work within the 6-10 rep range because it’s more convenient for me).
Example: If you can lift 60 kg for 3-4 sets of 10 reps, add 1-2.5 kg, or 2.5-5 kg (two small plates of 0.5 kg or 1.25 kg each) to the barbell and perform 4 working sets of 6 reps! The number of reps will naturally decrease because the working weight has increased, but the weight is heavier, and you’re still within the desired rep range (6-12 reps).
Your journal entry might look something like this:
17.08.2024 (Chest/Arms):
- Barbell Incline Bench Press:
Weight 62.5 kg: 6, 6, 6, 6. …………..
On the next workout (approximately a week later), when you train your chest and arms again, you should aim to do 4 sets of at least 7 reps, then 8-9 reps the following week, and eventually 10-12 reps.
Once you reach the coveted 10-12 reps per set, you can increase the weight on the barbell/dumbbells by another 1-2.5 kg. The number of reps will drop again to 6-7, and so on.
Why else do you need to record your progress?
Progressive overload will give you an incredible boost in your training! You can simply follow linear progression for the first few years of training, and it will yield great results!
However, sooner or later, you’ll hit a plateau where progress slows down. You could continue with the same linear progression, increasing weights slowly, but there’s also the option of periodizing your workouts.
Alternating between light, medium, and heavy workouts. If you choose this path, there will be even more details that you simply can’t remember offhand, making your workout journal even more valuable.
Your journal will also come in handy when you lose motivation. Just looking at how far you’ve come will remind you that this really works!
It’s also crucial to periodically (every 3-4 months) analyze your workouts, and again, you won’t be able to do this without a journal. The fact is, some exercises might not be as effective for your body type as others, and this is determined experimentally.
You’ll be able to review your records and analyze whether everything is going well or if something needs to be adjusted in your training.
So, this incredibly useful tool is also needed for these things:
- Overcoming weight plateaus
- Motivation through visible progress
- Analyzing your performance
Don’t forget:
“If you want something you’ve never had, you’ll have to do something you’ve never done.”
Coco Chanel
