Document your fitness journey, whether you’re starting for the first time or restarting on your own or with a personal trainer, shows that you’ve chosen to prioritize your health, and it’s about time!
For some reason, exercise is always the last thing people think about. When it is on your mind, usually you are trying to “fit” it in. Before you know it, it’s late at night and you are about to get ready for bed without even going to the gym. So how do you push through and actually make the time to go?
On behalf of Future Fitness Training, we want to help you alleviate the stressor of not getting that one hour of exercise in a day. We will help you achieve your goal however we best can. Whether it’s, in-club personal training or online training, we want to help you accomplish your goals! So, let’s get started today.
The first step… start documenting your fitness journey. Documenting your fitness journey not only helps you stay on track, but it gives you a sense of empowerment. While some people may think that documenting your fitness journey is amateur, you will be surprised about the benefits that truly happen when you write things down. Here are five reasons why you should keep track of your fitness journey.
1. Plan
Are you planning to have a personal trainer or not?
This may be the most crucial part of beginning your fitness journey. How are you going to do it? Are you going to hire a personal trainer? Do it on your own? Get a gym membership? In-home training? What’s your plan?
This is only the beginning. Let me make it easy for you, especially if you are brand new to the fitness world. Get a personal trainer and do your research. Not all personal trainers are created equal! It’s just like anything else. Just because you can make a box cake at home doesn’t mean you should design someone’s wedding cake. The same is true for personal trainers. Just because they played high school or college sports, have a certification, or went to college and got an exercise science degree does not make them a good, knowledgeable trainer that will help you document your fitness journey.
If the gym or trainer does not have some sort of a consultation where you can sit and ask your potential trainer questions along with them asking you questions about your goals, chances are they really aren’t that interested in helping you achieve your goals.
At Future Fitness Training, your first 7 days are free! Your first day is a consultation where you meet your trainer. This is a good time to find out about them, but more importantly, they get to find out what your goals are!
During your first consultation, they take you through a thorough assessment to see where your fitness level is. You also receive a free workout program, nutrition, and cardio plan. Plus, you meet with your trainer another time for a good workout! ALL FOR FREE! You have to start somewhere. Let someone help you to get you document your fitness journey.
2. Accountability
The best part about having a plan, it demands you to hold yourself accountable! Having a long-term plan keeps you driven.
Writing your workouts down helps you to keep focused. We have all done this before. You go into a gym, look around, and think to yourself, “where do I even start?’.
This is where a personal trainer comes in handy. A personal trainer, they have already taken the guesswork out for you. They have your program written for you. All you have to do is write down how much you lift.
What if you don’t have a personal trainer? That’s okay too. Get yourself a notebook, or you can use your phone, and start writing simple notes down. This is best done the night before to take the guesswork out of things. When you first start writing your workout, you may seem lost. I use the KISS method. Keep It Simple Stupid.
Even if you write in your notebook, “walk 30 minutes” you only accomplish 15 minutes. That is still awesome! It’s a start. By writing in your notebook, you truly hold yourself accountable and it’s cool to go back a month or two later and see the progress you have made.
3. Progress
“How do you know where you’re going, if you don’t know where you have come?” This phrase from “Alice in Wonderland” really hits home sometimes.
By adopting an exercise regime, you will start seeing/feeling changes. You may start having more energy, sleeping better, and really feeling good in your own body.
However, like all things, you will hit a plateau. You’ll start wondering, “why am I not getting stronger, why is my weight going the wrong direction when I was doing so well? I didn’t change anything”.
While all these questions can be answered by your educated personal trainer, it is also a good time to start looking at how far you have come.
Let’s use the example of our thirty-minute walk. For the first couple of weeks, you were only able to walk for fifteen minutes. Now, you are walking the full thirty minutes AND you have added in some light lifting. In the words of Russell Crowe in Gladiator, “are you not entertained?”.
This is awesome!
Instead of getting down on yourself and saying, “well I have lost some weight, I’ll just stop”, take a long, hard look at just how far you have come. This is a good time to go to your notebook and look at all your PRs (personal records). Since you have been writing down all the weights and times you have been doing this is simple. You are now able to see just how far you have truly come. This is why your fitness journey notebook is so vital.
You can also start identifying your strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has a favorite thing they like doing when exercising. Take me for instance. I LOVE working chest. It makes me feel strong. I hate, however, working back. I literally feel like I just started working out when I do back exercises. By tracking my progression, I am able to identify where I need additional help and am able to place more focus on that specific item in the near future.
Another good example to document your fitness journey is to take before, middle, and after pictures. When you look in a mirror every day, you may not see a difference, but pictures don’t lie, unless you photoshop. Don’t do that! This gives you one of the best opportunities to really see how far you have come.
4. Motivation
In your fitness journey, you will have many more small wins over a long period of time than one huge win. You will not wake up on day two of your fitness journey and realize you have lost thirty pounds. Sorry, it doesn’t work like that. You may, however, wake up two weeks in and notice you have lost around five pounds. According to the Mayo Clinic, the recommended weight loss is one-two pounds a week. This is what is considered healthy, sustainable weight loss.
Results can truly fuel your motivation. When you are continually seeing the scale go down, or your pants size decrease, the medication dosages continue to decrease, or better yet the doctor taking you off your high blood pressure medications because you simply do not have hypertension anymore. There is truly not a better feeling in the world than knowing that all your hard work is paying off. Use that motivation to continue and set/conquer new goals!
5. Gratitude
It is important to be patient and kind to yourself. Building greatness takes time. Habits are hard to break. Appreciate how far you have come. There are people out there that wish they could be you right now.
It is easy when you see the scale start to go in the opposite direction that you want, to stop. It’s harder to push yourself forward and continue on. Be in the pursuit of wanting the best version of yourself. Want more and reach higher goals. There is nothing wrong with wanting more…but first, you must appreciate where you are and focus on the now.
Go through your fitness journal. Look at the small gains you have made and see where you are today. Be grateful for how far you have come and how far you will go.
Document your fitness journey today. Start writing down what you would like to see in yourself. As you go through your journey, remember to go back through your notebook and stroll down memory lane to see just how far you have come. Remember, if you didn’t write it down, did it really happen?!
