I made a journal to follow the recommended routine - what’s missing from it?

@cantsed You haven't left anything out - this is great and does its job. At the bare minimum, for the log to be functional, you need to know what intensity or workload constitutes progressive overload in your current session, and you exceed this requirement. Beginners can get away with only knowing this (what happened last session and what that needs to happen today to progress), whereas more developed lifters will need to know what happened last cycle in order to plan their next.

Basically, my main caveat is that this is definitely best for beginners doing the RR. Because:
  • as you become more advanced, you can't use a hard-printed template format, because your routines will have much more variety, change more frequently, and deviate significantly from beginner programming as you start to specialize.
  • furthermore, it's MASSIVELY helpful to have this stuff stored electronically past the beginner stage. This is because the search function is absolutely indispensable, allowing you to zero in on particular exercises, dates, etc. As a beginner, tracking your linear progression on the RR, it's totally fine and appropriate to have a hard book as a souvenir of sorts, and as a tangible reinforcer of the logging habit - but when you get more into the weeds of training and things get complicated, you'll want to be able to manipulate your data more readily.
TLDR for the following paragraph: don't put too much effort or tiny detail into the log, write mini journal entries if you want it to be 'useful' for the future.

An interesting consideration that most people don't recognize is the fact, professed by Jujimufu, that logs expire. Your estimation of the value of the log as you create it will always exceed its actual future practicality. The idea is that in the back of our minds, we have an essentially neurotic notion that if we write everything down, we can 'capture' our progress and create a blueprint for ourselves, fearing that we'll lose our knowledge. Classic human folly, Tolkienesque. The fact is, beyond just knowing the bare bones progression requirements session to session, you are highly unlikely to refer back to a log over a few months old and be able to use it meaningfully, especially the small details. You should know and continually learn enough about training principles that your old logs aren't able to teach you anything. Thus their value is more as a journal, in the end. Most men don't keep journals normally, but I know several people, including myself, whose multi-year unbroken record of workout logs has captured the passing of the years. If you really want the log to mean something in the future, skip the hyper-detailed rundown of every session parameter and warmup choice, and write something quick about your day, what's happening in your life and the world, etc. Because I guarantee you that "5x5@225 - last set a grinder, 2RIR for first three sets, felt slow but was ok, had a banana pre-workout, band warmup with glute activation, work was hard today" will NOT be useful to you.
 
@jun_za Thanks for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback re journaling / logging progress. I totally agree - I think this journal would be best suited to people who are starting out, or at an intermediate level of bodyweight fitness. As a relative beginner myself, I tried to make something that would help me track progress week on week, help to reinforce the habit of training, give me a bit of insight into where I’m improving or not, etc.

As per the excellent Jujimufu article (that guys a fucking beast) I wouldn’t expect a journal from years ago to be much use (except for maybe nostalgia, inspiration, or a yard stick to see how far you’d come). But to track, and to continue to strive for, incremental progress week on week, those 1% improvements compound over time and for me, recording that in a journal really helps.

Keeping recorded detail from years ago probably isn’t that useful to refer back to. BUT the long term compound effect of the practice of journaling and continual recording ones progress helps massively with long term improvements and attainment of goals
 
@born1985 I did think a lot about this, including (or having a separate) instructional piece. I’ll probably do this as some follow up content. Initially I wanted to make a journal, just to record progress, and keep the instructional element separate. This is really just the journal piece for logging progress, with minimal instruction.

I agree it would probably help out a lot of people having detailed instructions for each exercise, as I know starting out, I was doing a lot of googling / YouTubing / reading the recommended routine and various links to understand and properly perform the exercises (although tbh I’m still on the lower level progressions)
 
@cantsed I would consider labeling the body measurement locations (with letters for example) on the person and the chart just so it’s clear and encourages the correct boxes are filled in each time. Nothing crazy but it was the main thing stuck out to me since at first I thought the lines on the man were bands rather than individual measurement location indicators.
 
@kingsery Hey thanks for the helpful suggestion, appreciate the feedback. I did start putting them on but it was a pain, I guess I was being lazy! It would make more sense to have them on there, you’re absolutely right
 
@dawn16 Thank you for the excellent suggestion, I’ll see if I can fit it in, or add some text to suggest including documenting it in one of the boxes
 
@cantsed On the progression sheet (3rd pic) some of the exercises should be timed rather than reps (parallel support hold, arch hangs, etc.). Is there a way to convert from reps to static hold times?
 
@sarbrigirl You’re absolutely right, and I did think that when creating that page (I think it’s just the two exercises for time you mention). There’s some text content above the progression sheet (out of view, bad pic soz) explaining how / when to fill in each achievement, including those that are timed (use 3x5 to signify 3x15s, up to 3x8 to signify 3x30s)
 
@betaninja I guess you’re in Aus? Unfortunately, it’s gonna cost about £4 to print, £5.30 to post, PayPal’s cut is about £0.60.. that’s $18.50 AUD before I’ve made a small margin to make it worthwhile. This is with a weak £ also! If we had a strong £, the conversion to AUD would be higher. UK / Eurozone isn’t as bad because the shipping is lower.

What sort of price would you pay for one? If the consensus is the prices are too high, and there’s more interest at a lower price (which in turn could bring production costs down), then I’d definitely do that. I guess at the moment a printed version isn’t viable with shipping costs to the other side of the world!
 
@cantsed Sorry, my comment was really entirely a lame Simpsons joke. I think the price is fair. I guess it depends on how thick it is, if it's 8 pages then you know I'll be taking it to my member of Parliament (this only makes sense if you watched that silly clip, again, sorry).

I'm going to get one even though I don't think I'll use it just because I'm so impressed with it.
 
@betaninja Lol, my bad! Just watched it, hadn’t seen it in years so it went over my head initially!

It’s just over 100 pages total (~6 months worth of logging for 3 workouts per week)

That’s really kind of you to say, I appreciate that, thank you!
 
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