Measure Your Progress When Training: 3 Ways to do it

You can apply these to any form of exercise

Sgt. 1st Class Brian Hamilton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (modified)

INTRODUCTION

Are you someone who struggles to identify whether or not you are making progress toward your health and fitness goals? If so, then read on to find out exactly how you can do this, regardless of the type of exercise you like to do.

FOUNDATIONAL REQUIREMENT FOR MEASURING PROGRESS

The first and most obvious consideration is knowing what you’ve done each time you showed up for a workout.

Unless you have a stellar memory or are performing a form of exercise that doesn’t involve equipment and for which a device can track your progress for you automatically (ex: walking or running), you must keep a manual record of what you do each time you work out. How you accomplish this is completely up to you, but you can’t skirt that habit if you want to succeed.

REALITY CHECK

Feeling that you had a good workout is not, in fact, a reliable measurement of whether you did or not. And that’s because emotions are not a trackable quantity.

THE QUANTITIES THAT YOU NEED TO TRACK

Regardless of the type of exercise you are performing, you can identify each instance as one repetition (rep).

Example: 1x (rep of) barbell curls, 1x (rep of) box jumps, 1x (rep of) running around the track, etc.

As you progress on your fitness journey you will expand your workout vocab to include things such as…

- 10x barbell curls = One set

Note: There are other types of sets (i.e.: dropsets, supersets, trisets, giant sets), but the concept of the set itself is what matters.

- 1x box jump = jumping up on the box, then back down

- 1x running around the track = One lap

- A group of abdominal or other exercises performed consecutively = One circuit

Now that we’ve established how to quantify things for tracking progress it’s time to find out how to do it in the next section.

THREE VARIABLES YOU CAN TRACK AND MANIPULATE: TIME, VOLUME, AND INTENSITY

Example #1 - Running

We’ll start with a famous example that many of you will be familiar with: the 6-minute mile.

The ability to run a mile (1.6 km) in 6 minutes for a recreational runner is considered to be remarkable at that level. And tracking your progress when you are training to run a 6-minute mile is very simple:

1. start your stopwatch 2) run a one-mile distance 3) stop your stopwatch 4) record your time

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Lesselich, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Let’s say you’ve accomplished your goal and can now run that distance in 6 minutes consistently. You don’t see a reason to try and go even faster, but you really enjoy running to keep fit and you would like to continue. You know that having a goal to chase goes a long way in keeping the motivation level high and making the exercise less about just moving through the motion.

Fret not! I’ve got you covered. Below are some things you can do to keep making progress while running that same 6-minute mile.

Manipulate how you track time:

Start by tracking how quickly you can go from B->A after your A->B run.

Do you need a break before you get on with the B->A portion of the run?

How short can you make this break?

Your goal can be to cover the two miles distance in 12 minutes consistently.

Manipulate how you track volume + time:

Create a circuit. Perform the round-trip run twice, three times, etc, and track the time per round:

Lap #1: 12 min

Lap #2: 16 min

or

Track the overall circuit time for all laps:

Day one circuit: 12+16 = 28 min

Day two circuit: 12+15.5 = 27.5 min

Manipulate how you track intensity + (time or volume):

Have you been running only on flat surfaces? Switch it up by finding places to run along your route that are slightly angled up or down.

or

Carry a larger (heavier) water bladder or small backpack with 1, 2, or 3Kg worth of stuff inside of it. Could be things you need, weighted bean bags, rocks in a plastic bag, etc.

or

Perform the same run in colder weather or light rain conditions (but not enough for it to be slippery).

Example #2 — Calisthenics (bodyweight exercises)

Let’s use the following exercises for example purposes: Push-ups, Pull-ups

Manipulate how you track time:

1. Decide how many reps per set you want to perform
2. Decide how long your break time will be between sets
3. Slowly reduce how long your break lasts between sets as you perform new workouts

Manipulate how you track volume + time:

1. Set your timer to [5] minutes
2. Start the timer
3. Perform as many reps with good form as you can without taking a break
4. Rest as little as possible
5. Continue performing reps with good form and resting for short periods until the timer goes off
6. Note how many reps you were able to complete in the [5] minutes
7. Slowly increase the number of reps you perform over time

Manipulate how you track intensity + (time or volume):

Add a weighted vest

or

Add a weight plate on your back (push-ups) or hang it from your waist with a special belt (pull-ups)

or

Add different variations of the push-ups and pull-ups to your workouts (angles, grips, etc)

GENERAL CONSIDERATION

Increased volume or intensity + reduced time can often add an aerobic quality to your workouts. This is something that is worth considering if you are trying to lose weight or simply improve your overall heart health.

CONCLUSION

In this article, we discussed the three variables (time, volume, intensity) that you can track to measure your fitness progress when performing your favorite exercises. I have also provided examples of how you can manipulate those variables to assist you in setting new goals and keeping you motivated to work out.

I hope that this information will help you in your fitness journey, and I look forward to reading your comments.

All the best,

Pascal

PS: You can go here to read more health and fitness articles, here to read my take on how lifting weights can help you forge a wholesome personality, or here to read more about me.