How to log your workouts

You get stronger by doing slightly more over time, a rep here and five pounds there. That's progressive overload, and it only works if you know what you did last time. Memory is bad at this. After a few weeks your sessions blur together, and you can't say whether your squat went up or you just remember it that way.

A log handles both. Before each set you can look up your target, and after a couple of months you can see which lifts are moving and which have stalled.

Every set needs three things: the exercise, the weight and the number of reps. Write them in the order you did them, with the date at the top of each session.

Use the same name for an exercise every time. If it's "Incline DB Press" this week and "incline dumbbell bench" next week, you'll have trouble finding it later, and so will a spreadsheet formula or an app.

A few extras are worth adding when they change how you read the numbers:

• How hard the set was, if you stopped short of failure on purpose. "2 left" (two reps in reserve) tells you there was room to push.
• Equipment settings, like a seat height or a cable pin, so next week's numbers are comparable.
• Pain or a form problem, so you know later why a set came in low.
• Whether a dumbbell weight is per hand or for the pair.

Logs get abandoned when they take too long to fill in. You don't need warm-up sets, rest times or how you felt that day unless you use them later. If you've never looked back at a column, stop filling it in.

Rest times are a good example. If your program doesn't set them, timing every rest adds work between sets without telling you much.

Here are two leg days from the same log, a week apart.

The squat went up 5 lb and every set still hit 5 reps, so next week can try 235. The Romanian deadlift reached 8 reps on all three sets, the top of a 6 to 8 range, so it's time to add weight. Leg press stayed at 360 lb and gained reps, which counts as progress too.

Check last time before you start each exercise, then try to beat it by a small amount. One more rep on one set is enough.

To decide between adding reps and adding weight, you can use double progression. Pick a rep range, say 6 to 8. Keep the same weight until you can do every set at the top of the range, then add the smallest jump available and work back up from the bottom of the range. That jump is often 5 lb for upper-body lifts and 5 to 10 lb for squats and deadlifts.

If you miss your numbers on a bad day, write down what you did anyway. A low session in the log tells you more than a gap.

If you want your log to hold more than numbers, these notes are worth the few seconds they take:

• A form cue that worked, like "elbows tucked" on bench.
• How long you slept, if you suspect it affects your lifts.
• Which gym or machine you used, if you train in more than one place.
• A one-line plan for next session, such as "Try 235 on squat."
• Personal records with the date, so they're easy to find later.

Keep each note short. A journal you can fill in between sets lasts longer than one that needs ten minutes after the workout.

Once a week, glance at your main lifts to check they're moving. Every month or so, look at each exercise across its last several sessions.

If a lift hasn't improved in three or four sessions, change one thing. You could drop the weight by about 10% and build back up, switch to a different rep range, or swap in a close variation of the exercise. Note the change in your log so you can see later whether it helped.

Any of them works if you keep using it. Paper is fast and never needs charging, but looking back more than a few pages is slow. A spreadsheet makes reviewing easy and can chart your lifts. Our free workout log template is ready to use, though a spreadsheet is harder to fill in on a phone between sets.

An app does the lookups for you. In PureLog, last time's weight and reps are already filled in when you pick an exercise, and the Progress tab draws a chart for each lift, so the weekly review takes a glance.