@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:
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.
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.
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.