A great little helper when you want to stay in alignment with your goals is to get yourself a training diary. This can make a huge difference in your progress and can help you gain muscles easier.
Why is that?
First of all, it is a great way to help you stay focused. Unless you keep your mind on what it is you want to achieve – big muscles, perhaps gaining at least 5 pounds of muscles each month – you will have a hard time to get what you want. Almost all successful people do this, whatever area they are being successful in. First they set their goals and then they do sub goals and also, very importantly, keep track of how they are progressing.
With a training diary, you can easily do this and I promise it will help you stay motivated.
So how do you best use you training diary or log?
It’s a great idea to sit down with it once a month(or when you’ve decided you want to finally gain those muscles you’ve been dreaming of for so long). Write down what you want to achieve. If you are just beginning your training, write down how you want your body to look like in maybe a year from this date and how heavy weights you want to be able to lift by then. Then look at the month and set goals for how many times you want to train each week, and you can also write down what progress you wish to see. This will tell your subconscious which direction you’ve decided to take and it will be easier to get your whole being to do what it takes to reach your goals.
Then, every time you are going to the gym, write down in your log which muscle group you’ve trained, how heavy weights you lifted, how many reps you did and how much time you spent at the gym. You can also rate your energy level, how easy it felt, maybe scale it 1-10.
It is also beneficial to write down in your diary what you’ve been eating and how much calories you’ve taken in this day. By doing this you make sure that you get enough energy each day since you do need more energy when you are beginning to build big muscles.
Having a training diary surely is one of the most helpful things you can have when you want to gain muscles, and the few minutes you use to focus your mind on your goals each day truly makes a difference. Try it and see for yourself!
I am a firm believe in keeping a log of what you’re doing and how you’re progressing. If you really are going for progressive overload, you have to keep track of things! How else will you know what you did last time, and what you need to do to beat it?