#78: How Tracking Your Strength Training Sessions Speeds Up Results

Are you tracking your lifts? 🤔

If not, there are some good reasons why you should. I go through them in this episode of the podcast. 

📝 You can use paper and pen or a fancy app - it's up to you (I prefer pen and paper myself). 

And if you don't have a tracker yet, download a copy of my free Google-sheets based tracker here >>

Enjoy the show!
x Lynn

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to 40+ Fitness for Women
• 0:59 Vacation Recap: Island Hopping in Finland
• 2:24 Back to the Gym: Observations and Insights
• 3:08 The Importance of Tracking Your Workouts
• 3:19 Benefit 1: Faster Workout Sessions
• 4:24 Benefit 2: Ensuring Progressive Overload
• 9:48 Benefit 3: Boosting Confidence and Mindset
• 14:06 Tracking Your Workouts Effectively
• 17:20 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

#78: How Tracking Your Strength Training Sessions Speeds Up Results

Welcome to 40+ fitness for women. I'm Lynn Sederlöf-Airisto, your host, and I'm a certified menopause fitness coach, helping women to build the bodies that they want to spend the rest of their lives in. And today we are going to talk about tracking your weight training sessions and what are the benefits and why that is actually something you may want to consider doing.

I just got back from a week on the sea, which was an amazing vacation. But not a lot of movement happens when you're living on a boat. This was an eight and a half meter long boat. So my boyfriend's boat, and we were kind of Island hopping here in Finland. If, if you all aren't familiar with Finland, which most people don't even know where it is, we're right here, sandwiched between Sweden and Russia, uh, up North, but the whole the southern border is on the sea and the sea is filled with little islands. So it's the most amazing place to go on a boat because you can spend your week or two weeks and some people spend like a month out there on their boats. Island hopping. Right? So you just stop at one port and spend the night.

Some of them have restaurants and some stores and saunas and this kind of thing facilities and other islands just are pretty much deserted. Well, there might be other people visiting them while you're there. But they won't have anything, maybe a little campfire area or something like that. And so you can spend your vacation that way and it was really, really fun, but not a weight room in sight. So yesterday when I came back or Sunday, I came back yesterday was my first full day back. I was back in the weight room and man, I was not alone. So Monday night in the weight room was packed. And one thing that I noticed yesterday, which I noticed so often is that it seems like almost nobody is tracking what they are doing.

There are people there that I've seen, you know, tens, if not hundreds of times, and then some more newie lifters. And really, really rarely do I see anybody who's tracking. Marking down their lifts, either on a phone or a piece of paper as they're going. I think I'm one of the only ones. So I wanted to talk today a little bit about why that is something you might actually want to be doing and kind of the benefits of doing that.

And I think there are three main ones. So let's go through those.

The first benefit is that your sessions will be faster because you've already, of course, got written down what you're going to be doing, like which exercises you're going to be doing. And you'll know what weight you're going to be putting on the machine or on the bar or what dumbbell you're going to be picking up.

And you know, like how many reps you probably can do. So it's much faster to move from machine to machine. Now, if you are one of my clients, customers, then you have a program. So you look in the app and you can see what the last weight that you used was and how many reps you did last time. So that works perfectly.

But a lot of people are in there kind of thinking, Hmm, what am I going to do testing? What is the right way? That kind of thing. And it just slows things down. So that's like the first benefit, but maybe not the best benefit out of it, but that is certainly one of the benefits.

The second reason that you want to be tracking is to ensure that you're applying progressive overload. So as you get stronger, you need to start increasing the stimulus that you are putting on your muscles. Otherwise your muscles just stay at that particular strength. They don't continue to develop. And I always compare this because I think maybe people understand this better because more of us have probably jogged than have lifted weights.

But if you were to start jogging, right? And you've never jogged before and you decide, okay, I'm going to draw one time around my block. Okay. And I am going to take. five minutes to jog around the block. So you do that. And the first time you do it, it feels really, really hard, right? Second time you do it, it feels a little bit easier.

Third time you do it, you know, your, your lungs are starting to get in shape. Your legs are starting to get used to this, your body, all that. And it starts to get easy. Now, if for the rest of the year, all you do is run around the block. That one block, that same block, and you always go at that exact same speed so that it takes you five minutes.

You're not getting any better at running, right? You're not going faster. You're not going farther. You are just good at running around one block in five minutes. Right? You're not developing as a runner.

If you wanted to develop as a runner, you would maybe shorten the amount of time. You know, you'd be like, hey, I'm going to run this a little bit faster this time, and I'm going to try to run it even faster and even faster.

Or you might decide that that particular pace is good for you, and you might try to run two blocks. Right? So that's how you would do it for running. Well, it's the same kind of idea for weight training, for your muscles, that if you're just using the same stimulus, in other words, you're doing the same weight and the same number of reps, and you're doing that week in, week out, week in, week out, in the beginning, it's going to feel hard.

Right? Cause your muscles are weak. And then at some point your muscles are gonna be like, okay, we've adapted. We can do this weight this many times. But if you just keep doing that nothing's going to happen. It's gonna like stop developing. And that's why it is really important that as we get stronger, we increase our load because our muscles are ready for that.

 That small load was a stimulus in the beginning. Now it's no longer very stimulating. So we increase the load a little bit at a time. And the way that we do that increasing of the load is that we increase the number of reps that we're doing each session. And then once you reach kind of the top of your rep range, so you reach a certain number of reps, then you can increase the weight that you are lifting.

So we want to make sure that we're applying this progressive overload. So that we begin to develop and the best way to make sure that you are actually doing that is that you write down what you're doing. So you start, let's say, bicep curls, and the very first time you do it, you're using a two pound weight and you realize, okay, I can do this 8x. Okay, so that was your first session. The next time you go in, you're like, okay, I was using two pounds, I was able to do it eight times. Now, let me go for nine. Okay. So then you try to do it 9x. And then, on and on and on. But the point is that that way you can ensure that you're not just standing still running around that same block for five minutes for the rest of your life.

Okay. Cause you are not going to build muscle that way. You're not going to get tone that way. You're not going to get stronger that way. And, um, in fact, this is one of the things that I noticed was a huge, huge, huge difference when I switched from doing, I was doing Les Mills body pump classes, right? For years, years.

Probably five years, maybe longer than that. I should actually look back and be like, how many years was I doing that? But in any case, you know, they go through all your muscle groups and I was working my biceps with five kilo weights and it felt really, really hard each time. And, um, but. because that kind of format doesn't really allow progressive overload.

I never went beyond the five kilo weights in all those years that I was doing that class. And then when I started strength training and keeping track and starting to apply progressive overload, it really was just a matter of months before I was lifting 10 kilo weights, curling, bicep curling, 10 kilo weights.

So it makes a huge, huge difference. Okay. That was a long explanation, but I think it's important to remind you of what is progressive overload. Cause that's one of the most important things that you have there. Okay.

And the third reason, and this is one that I think nobody really talks about, but it's something I have noticed myself very much in my training. And also when you work with clients like one on one when you're standing there with them in their sessions is that the fact that you have written down what you did last time.

So if we go back to that example, you'd done the two pound weights and you had done them. What did I say? Six times. This time, when you go in, you know that, Hey, I can bicep curl that six times. So when you pick up that weight, even if it feels heavy, you know, you already know that, Hey, I can do this six times.

I can do this at least six times because I've done it six times, right? And maybe I can even do it seven times. And that just sets you up in a completely different. mindset, right? When you approach your set, your expectation on yourself is completely different than if you just picked up that two pound weight and you're like, okay, well, let's see how many I can do.

Well, maybe that day you're feeling kind of lazy or whatever, or you're thinking to yourself, Oh, this feels so hard today. And then you can only do three reps. Because you've forgotten that actually you can do six reps and I have to say, I noticed this in my own training all the time that, you know, I, I look at a weight and I put the pin in or whatever, if it's a last time this happened to me, I was doing seated rows.

So I put the pin in and I was like, Oh, this is a heavy weight. And the first rep that I did, it was already heavy, you know? And because I knew that, Hey, Lynn, you've actually already done seven reps of this. I knew that, okay, this may feel heavy, but man, it's heavy. And I'm able to do this. And then I was able to do the seven reps.

Now, caveat, I'll say that it's not like you're always going to be able to do more than you did last time. That is not going to happen. You're going to have days where you're tired. Maybe you haven't eaten enough. Maybe you didn't sleep enough. Maybe you haven't recovered enough. Maybe there's some other stress in your mind.

For some reason, you're just not able to recruit your muscles in the same way and like bring it the same way you always do. But having that written down there, I think mentally just puts you in a whole different frame of mind. I mean, think about, In running, you know, for a really long time, nobody had done a four minute mile and mentally for everybody.

It was like, Oh, four minute mile. It is not even possible to achieve. So nobody achieved it. But the first time somebody broke that, then all of a sudden it was like, Oh my God. One, a human can do a four minute mile. And after that people started being able to do the four minute mile. So, so this part of tracking is like really a mental part to help you to understand what you're able to do.

So I hope these three reasons have convinced you that you should not just be walking into the weight room. Even if you're doing the same machines or the same, you know, uh, exercises week after week, don't just go to that exercise and pick up the weight that you had last time and then do like 10 or 12.

You're going to really be pedaling in place. It is exactly the same as you running around that one block in five minutes and doing that week after week, after week, after week, after week, you are not preparing yourself for a marathon. You are staying at exactly that same level. So start challenging yourself in the weight room by tracking and then seeing if you can do a little bit better this time than you did last time. 

Okay. And then finally a word about what is a tracker, what's a good tracker. So if you're one of my clients or customers, then you get a tracker in the app where you write down what weight and how many reps you did last time you trained. And you see that information when you go to do that exercise next time.

So that's easy enough. You can also use pen and paper when I started in college, they had these sheets where you would write down the exercise that you were going to do. And then they had like slots to put in, um, your sets and reps. And that was super easy. And then you got to keep that piece of paper there at the gym.

So it was always ready for you. You know, when you went in the next time, maybe there are some gyms that still do that. And if that is at your gym, you have that kind of thing use it. 

I personally still love to use pen and paper. I kind of don't want to be messing around with my phone very much when I'm at the gym. I do my reps, my sets, I pace back and forth next to whatever equipment I'm using while I'm waiting for the next set. So I don't want to, And like go down the rabbit hole of getting on my phone.

So I use this little tiny pad, which is about the size of my phone. Actually, it's like a little foot pad. And I write down what I'm going to do that day. And I, you know, look back in the pad. What did I do in bicep curls last time? And then I'll write it down on that page like what is my target for this time?

Okay. This is not ideal in the sense that it takes me 10 minutes to Set myself up for that day's training because I go back and I like check what I did last time. So maybe not perfect ideal, but that's what I like. So I mean, really you can do whatever you like. I've seen people who have big spiral notebooks and they come in and they write things down.

And I actually offer a free tracker and my website and you are welcome to download it. It's an Excel sheet that I have. All set up and you write in the exercises that you do and then there are columns to put in the, the weights and the reps. You can access that online so you can fill it in from your phone so that you have everything online and it's actually really nice because you can see how your weights increase over time and how your reps increase over time.

I've had people who download that right to me and say, this is great because I thought I wasn't really making progress and then once I started tracking I realized that I am getting stronger. So, so it really is useful. 

And then if you don't like to mess around with things on your phone, like I don't, you could print out that Excel sheet and carry it with you, at the gym.

And the link is in the show notes for the tracker, but it's at www.befitafter40.com/ tracker and happy for you to use that if you don't have a tracker yet. 

All right. And so that was it for this time. And I hope you are having a wonderful August wherever you are and talk to you next week. In the meanwhile, happy training.