Why you should definitely keep a workout diary

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

A workout diary is an important organizational element. Helps to record results and track progress. Also, keeping a journal is tedious and boring. Why you can't refuse to record your work and achievements, and how narrative psychology explains the benefits of the diary, says professional trainer Tanner Base.

There are three guys living in Michigan. They eat, communicate, celebrate together. Absolutely normal guys, except for the fact that they live in a psychiatric clinic. How did they get there? Everyone considers himself to be Jesus.

Crazy in its purest form, but nothing new. All over the world, mentally ill people from time to time declare themselves gods. But none of these three will be able to convince that the real Jesus is his roommate. Each of them tells his own version of events. And he does not listen to any logical arguments that can destroy the theory. Not from psychotherapists, not from the gods from the next bed.

They perfectly find errors in reasoning from each other. And on the go, they change their testimony in order to plug the holes found by the interlocutors. None of them will ever admit that they are wrong. So they will continue to tell stories that prove why they are real.

These guys have a narrative disorder. We have with you too.

For those in the tank: Narrative is storytelling. Our brains are designed to perceive the world in a narrative form. Roughly speaking, narrative is everything.

Our ability to explain our life through storytelling is part of a complex process. So complex that we don't even know what we are doing. We have convinced ourselves that we are rational, logical creatures, capable of making the right decisions.

What does training have to do with it?

Ironically, this is most evident in health and fitness issues.

Every day, people break their diet and do not achieve their training goals. On the street, a truck with gingerbread overturned, there was no time to reach the hall - a million reasons.

When something like this happens, we try to build the event into the picture of our life. We tell ourselves how much we have already done, how tired we are, and explain why we cannot get into the gym. We adapt our narrative to find an excuse for ourselves. Sound familiar?

And the funny thing is that we do not forgive others of this kind. If your friend who wants to lose weight eats a piece of cake, you will criticize her. And you will be outraged loudly, listening to her pathetic excuses. Calculate how many hours she spent on TV shows and remember every can of cola she drank.

And it would be necessary to do so in relation to yourself.

Three gods come on stage again to teach us a thing or two. The brain deceives you by deliberately using errors in the narrative. This is an evolutionary mechanism that distinguishes us from other animals. If we have a choice, the brain will choose to perceive information in the form of a story.

Structured stories are better understood than data sets.

Our brain is made up of 85 billion neurons. Compare this to the feline (and cats are the most vicious animals), which has only a billion nerve cells. A sea of information passes through the neural circuits every second. And you need to organize it somehow. The brain forms stories.

We experience the world in the form of history.

So what does training have to do with it?

Now let's move on to fitness again. Think back to the last goal you set before you started training, but failed to achieve. And what story did you tell then to justify yourself. Were you busy? Too much piled on?

Now remember your friends who tried to do the same and did not reach the goal. They told themselves the same stories, but you saw them from the outside and noticed all the excuses, wasted hours and mistakes that they made.

Seeing people lie to themselves is a daily routine.

David Mac Reney writer, author of books on the peculiarities of the work and development of the brain

You can recognize lies and tricks, but only from other people. This is a narrative disorder in all its glory: in someone else's eye we see a speck, not noticing the log in ours.

Battle hemispheres

The hemispheres of our brains fight each other for the right to tell stories. This is a functional antagonism. The more unusual the situation in which you find yourself, the more the opposition of the hemispheres manifests itself, because they fight for the right to control the processes of thinking.

The left side is responsible for mind blowing stories. She acts like a guy who went to Vegas and tells everyone how cool he is. He is, of course, the most ordinary, but he likes to feel important.

But when the situation gets out of control, the right hemisphere begins shamanic dances with tambourines, trying to restore the left sense of reality. The right side knows what really happened in Vegas.

The left hemisphere is a double agent that sabotages all your efforts.

When unexpected turns happen in life, you look for any way out. It is on these paths that good goals die in the treacherous paws of the left hemisphere.

It all starts with. You decide to think about it tomorrow. And tomorrow you shift it to the next day.

How many people never went on a diet because they were going to start on Monday?

Narrative disorder in the game! It will tell you why you can't get started today. Tomorrow it will repeat the tale. And the day after tomorrow. And after the day after tomorrow. Other people see right through us, but we cannot. Because we are at the mercy of our personal narrative.

The path to success is to connect the right hemisphere.

How a workout diary can help

One of my favorite ways to deal with narrative deviations is to write down your stats. I have a diary with all its characteristics, which one day will be worth millions.

Whenever I set any sporting goal for myself - reducing body fat to a certain amount, powerlifting competition, half marathon - I start writing down EVERYTHING.

• I put the intensity of training in.
• I count the intake and consumption of calories in.
• I keep a diary.

Why am I doing this? Then, that data writes its narrative.

If someone has been on a diet for eight weeks and not seeing results, it's damn hard to explain why this is happening if there is no data to analyze. But if it is recorded how the substances entered the body, that is, what to work with.

Look at the numbers, draw conclusions.

If your workout doesn't work, you need to reevaluate the program. If there is nothing to evaluate, then you are in flight. If I look at my log in the application and see that it was not working enough, then I have objective information in my hands. And I start to train more.

But what about subjective sensations, well-being? A diary will help here. Rereading the diaries will help you get into the old skin and see what I thought about three weeks ago when I was doing the exercises. Such analysis is very necessary if there is a long-term goal and it is required to measure progress. Did the dumbbells seem heavier than usual? Is there an old injury? Was it difficult to stretch? This information is invaluable.

Narratives are important. It's easy to say that the ability to tell stories sets us apart from monkeys. But if you allow them too much, you can ruin everything. They will make you believe that failure can be explained in some way, that it is normal. Don't give in. And then go as the fourth neighbor to the ward to the gods.