What’s In Your Fitness Toolkit?

Last week I came back to fitness blogging with a note about goals. I asked you all to write down your fitness goals, regardless of if they’re “fit back into my bikini” or “lower my cholesterol”. These goals needed to be:

• Specific – A vague goal like “be healthier”, “run more” or “eat less” is meaningless.
• Measurable – A goal you can’t measure is a goal you can’t work towards. For example “lose weight” is meaningless but “lose 20lbs by Xmas” is good
• Realistic – If you have a bad back, you probably won’t be doing deadlifts next month. Similarly, if you are severely overweight, you’re not going to be slim by next week. Goals need to be realistic or you’re just setting yourself up for failure.

I emphasize these things because these goals are not just things to dream about.  These goals are actually tools for us to use.  We will fine tune these goals, create plans based on them and use them as our motivation.  As such, they are the first tool in our fitness tool kit.

Common Goals

Now, most health related goals usually fall into the following categories:

• Lose weight – This could be stated as a simple weight goal or it could be something like “lose 3 inches from my waist”. Either way, you want to get rid of some extra fat. This is actually not the best of goals since weight loss isn’t always the healthiest of ideals but hey, it’s better than nothing.
• Improve health – This one is usually stated as “lower cholesterol”, “lower blood pressure” or “ability to go up the stairs in my house without being out of breath”. All of these are good goals since better health is a great thing to strive for.
• Performance goals – “run a mile in under 10 minutes”, “bench press 200lbs” or “run a marathon”. These are all standard ways of setting some kind of achievement based goal.

The goals for improving health are usually the best since they’re all encompassing but the other ones aren’t bad either. Actually, the best way to go about getting fit is to have multiple goals, preferably some from each category.  So if you have time, go back and try to come up with a goal or two from each of these categories.

Now let’s look at the tools we’ll be using.

• Move more – This doesn’t necessarily mean exercise. It just means getting a more active lifestyle. We’ll examine this in more detail in follow up posts but for the moment, think of this as walking up the stairs instead of taking the elevator.
• Resistance exercise – This one usually means things like pushups, lifting weights and so on. Basically, this is a workout for your muscles and bones.
• Cardio exercise – If resistance exercise is for your muscles and bones then cardio exercise is for your heart. This one includes things like running, swimming and biking.
• Eating healthier – This means both eating less and eating better. Yes, you will need to give up some of those cheeseburgers and replace a few of those lattes with water.

This is 90% of our basic tool kit.  From each one of these categories we will draw specific items that will help us achieve our goals.

The Last 10%

One last thing, I am not in the business of selling magic solutions that will make you thin and healthy in 3 weeks and allow you to go back to your old ways afterwards.  If you want to get fit with me then you will need to commit to making lifelong changes. You must be willing to commit to exercising, being active and eating healthier FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Think about that one for a second because it’s a big one. I will suggest a variety of ideas to you in the next few weeks and you need to decide if you want to adopt them as a part of your life. I urge you to try them out before ruling them out, but I also urge you to take this seriously. If you want a healthier life you need a healthier way of living life. No temporary diets, short term exercise plans and month long eating programs. If you’re not willing to commit to a life long change, you may as well stop reading now because you’ll be wasting your time.  That’s the last 10% of our tool kit, a resolve to change our lives in permanent ways.  Sounds so simple but without this 10% you’re pretty much doomed to fail in the long run.

Now, if you’re ready to make some changes, tune in next week when we start talking about some ways of adding activity to your life.

By the way, here’s my own list of goals:

• Run the Maui Marathon in September in under 6 hours.
• Get to 180lbs by February of 2011
• Do a set of 10 bench presses with 300lbs by January of 2011
• Try out (at least 10 classes) a martial art of some kind by June of next year
• Completely eliminate soft drinks from my diet by October of 2010 (for long time readers of 60 in 3, you know how I’ve struggled with getting rid of my diet coke habit).
• Have my doctor tell me she’s amazed with how healthy I am when I take my next physical in February of 2011.  (Ok, so this one isn’t very specific but it’s good for the ego and that’s not a bad thing)

What’s A Good Goal?

Answer - A good goal is something you can barely achieve in the time specified.

Notice some important things.

Can Achieve

If my goal is “I want to win the next ms. America contest” that’s a pretty bad goal.  As a 35 year old man, I really doubt I could be Ms. America.  So that’s lesson #1, a good goal has to be achieveable.

Barely

A good goal is something you need to strive for and try really hard.  If it’s easy, it’s not a good goal.  If my goal is to get to 220lbs then that’s a pretty bad goal, since I already weigh 221.  Losing 1lb is meaningless and easy.

Time Specified

A goal with no timeline is meaningless.  I want to reach 180lbs.  Really?  When?  Is it next month?  That’s not achieveable and so it’s stupid.  Is it within the next ten years?  Also meaningless.  Is it by Dec 31st, 2009?  Well, now we’re talking.  That’s achieveable but it’s tough, which makes it a perfect goal.  I would have to push myself to achieve this but I think I could do it.  Alternatively, I could say my goal is to reach 215lbs by end of June.  Again, tough but achievable.  Notice how the numbers change with the timeline.  Something that’s impossible in the short term could be a good goal in a longer time frame.  Alternatively, something that’s easy in the long term could be tough but doable in a shorter time line.

The Magic Three Parts

So remember, when setting your goals:

• Achievable - If it’s not doable, it’s not a good goal.  It may be nice to day dream but those day dreams are meaningless as goals unless there’s a way to make them come true.
• Tough - A good goal must challenge you.  It must not be easy.  It must be hard and push you right to your limits.
• Time based - A good goal must have a deadline.  This deadline will in many cases determine if the goal is too tough or too easy.  Without a deadline, a goal is useless.

###

What are your goals and their deadlines?  Would love to hear them through the comments.  Feel free to include non fitness related goals if you want to share.

The Workout Spreadsheet

Personal confession time, I’m a bit obsessive compulsive when it comes to keeping records and sorting things. I like it when everything neatly lines up or divides into well planned categories. I’m also a bit obsessive when it comes to tracking things. For the most part, this isn’t too bad. At least, my wife hasn’t complained too much yet

However, in some ways, this has proved to be very useful. I’ve already talked about FitDay and the benefits I’m seeing from keeping track of things. I’m probably going to do a follow up to that shortly since I’m finding FitDay to be more and more useful as time goes by. However, for today I wanted to talk about the benefits of keeping track of your workout.

Why keep track?

A few months ago , a coworker saw me updating my workout spreadsheet and asked me “why do you keep track of all these things? Seems like of time to spend on something so simple.” I didn’t provide much of an answer right then because I don’t really think he was looking for an answer, but I would like to provide a few right now. Why keep track of a workout?

First, because there’s a lot of information to remember. I do 24 different exercises in a workout these days. That’s 24 exercises to remember plus 24 weights or numbers of reps associated with them. 48 things to memorize in total, which I really don’t feel like doing. I don’t want to remember if I’m supposed to be doing 90lb deadlifts or 80lbs. I want to just look at a piece of paper and see what it says. I have better things to memorize and think about while I work out.

Second, because it helps show progress. When I first started working out, I would record each week separately. I would then graph the number of reps and the weight I used for each exercise. Sounds a bit tiresome, but it’s amazingly useful. Doing something like that can really help you see where you’re progressing and where you’re not. I could look at an exercise and see right away if I was improving or not.

Finally, because I actually found that it helped me focus. Having my workout written down on paper told me exactly what I needed to do that day. There was never a need to stop and think “well, what exercise should I do next?” I never had to try and remember if I had already done something or not, because I simply followed the order in which they were written down.

So What Do You Need?

I’ve tried a number of online sites and I’ve found them all lacking. There was too much data entry required for set up and not enough pay back in terms of useful reports. I’ve also tried a number of software packages, but again, I didn’t find the work involved to be worth the effort. So what I ended up with was a simple spreadsheet. I originally used Excel, but recently switched to Google Docs because I wanted my spreadsheet to be online and available from any location. I’m posted up a sample of what my workout spreadsheet looks like here, but you might need a Google account to view it. I’m also going to try and post a version of it in Excel, but that might take a bit longer. Feel free to copy this spreadsheet and make your own version. Also, you should make whatever modifications to it you think are appropriate. There’s really no right way to track your workout, it’s all about what works for you.
The Spreadsheet

As you can see, the first page is just my workout. It’s nothing fancy, it’s just a simple spreadsheet with all my exercises and associated reps/weights. The second page is where it gets interesting. This is just a sample of what you can do with a good spreadsheet, but it’s essentially a progress tracker for my legs workout. There’s even a handy little graph that shows how well I’ve been doing on leg lifts. You could easily create something like this for any workout and modify to your heart’s content. Then, just add in your numbers once a week and you have a great tool to measure progress with.

Personally, I don’t use the progress tracker aspect of this spreadsheet, but I do recommend that every beginner build something like this to their own liking. It’s very important in the beginning to keep track of what you’re doing and how well you’re doing it.

Print It Out

I’m a big fan of conserving paper, so I don’t print out too many versions of my spreadsheet. What I usually do is print out a version on the first week of the month and then use that sheet for the whole month. Just write on it if you need to note anything down like increased weights or reps. Then copy that information to your spreadsheet next time you’re near a computer, assuming you’re tracking progress. By the end of the month, your print out is likely to be some messy, sweaty and dirty that it’s probably not usable. Recycle it and make another.

Summary

There’s no need to spend a lot of time or money on tracking your workout, but you should put in a bit of effort to make sure you’re noting down the important numbers. That will keep you on track to a more efficient every time.