Bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts are becoming more and more conscious of their training regime which is helping them improve in their workouts. Keeping a journal not only allows you to see what you’ve done, but also gives you insight into the direction you are going.
Ask any successful bodybuilder and he will tell you that a diet and workout journal is incredibly beneficial to learn about your own physique and it allows you to make adjustments to keep improving. A journal serves many purposes for a bodybuilder, a few are listed below:
- It helps to keep track of your progress.
- It helps to measure changes in training intensity, food volumes, weight fluctuations, etc.
- It serves as a motivating factor It helps to remember what you did at your last workout so that you can make sure that you keep increasing your intensity.
- It helps to find flaws and successes in your training and nutrition strategies.
Your Training Journal
Your training journal should keep track of the following:
- Body part trained
- Exercises used
- Weight used for each exercise
- Number of repetitions for each exercise
- Time trained
- Any other info you might find useful
I also find that it helps to rate each workout on a 5 star system i.e. 5 stars for an awesome workout, 1 for a bad one. This helps you find workouts that work for you and dump ones that don’t. It also helps to give comments on why the workout got the rating it did.
Your Nutrition Journal
Your nutrition journal is really the most important one. In order to be a successful bodybuilder you need to eat the correct proportions of protein, fat and carbohydrates, a journal helps to keep track of this. Your food journal will help you gauge if you are getting in enough of the right calories.
The following should be kept:
- Time of the day you ate your meal.
- The specific type and amount of each food you are eating.
- Feedback about how you felt after eating each meal.
Creatine Monohydrate
Creatine’s main purpose is to supply our muscles with energy. It is found in red meat, but you would have to eat an enormous amount of meat to get the same benefits as taking pure creatine powder in supplement form. Try adding creatine to your supplementation program and I’m sure it will help to increase your energy levels which will allow you to have amazing workouts!
