Spartan Race Training Plan
Image credits: Total Shape
Every weight loss, muscle building and fitness program needs to be monitored and tracked. Just look at our ultimate guide to tracking to see why. You need to measure the effectiveness of your exercises and training to understand whether your routine is really benefiting you. The common mistake made by people that engage in regular workout routines is that they never list the developments made since day one. If you can’t look back at the progress you have made you may become seriously demotivated.
This is why you need a fitness planner. It will help you in so many ways to progress towards your goals.
1. Clarify & Focus Your Fitness Goals
From time to time we all lose sight of the main reason why we started exercising. This happens after we have already been exercising for a while. We begin to question why we started as we are not seeing the desired results. If life gets busy and we feel we need to free up some more time, fitness may not be on our minds as a priority. Using a fitness planner will remind you of the main reason why you started your fitness activities.
Recording your workouts and daily nutrition reminds you of your main goal, whether that be muscle gain or fat loss. It allows you to focus on that one goal in particular so that you do not get distracted and float between different objectives. With a planner, you can always go back and remind yourself of the more important goals you have set yourself and why you started your fitness journey.
2. Break Down Milestones
Of course, the end goal is to lose weight or gain muscle mass and to have a healthier and fitter body, however, you cannot achieve this goal overnight.
It can be a long process that requires a lot of work and dedication. You need to achieve smaller milestones consistently to ensure you stay motivated. With a planner, you will be able to break down your overriding goal and the timeframe you have into smaller milestones. Reaching these milestones will keep you motivated as it will be easier to monitor the small, important changes happening to your body.
Without these “mirco-goals” it may seem like you are not progressing or you are taking too long to reach a certain point. The planner will keep you on track and it will make you think subconsciously about these milestones, helping you to make better decisions with regards to your diet and training.
3. Keeping Track of Progress
This is probably the main reason people keep a fitness planner or journal. As previously mentioned, many people give up on their set objective because they feel they are not seeing results.
Recording your workouts, diet and more, allows you to know whether you have progressed. You can look back and see whether you can now lift a heavier weight, do more reps or if your body fat % has decreased since you started. All of these components are signs of progression and will keep you motivated.
It allows you to see whether your current training and diet is having the desired effect. If your results are not improving, you know you need to mix things up and potentially construct a more complex routine. Keeping track means literally writing down all the developments you have seen in your body or your training. A planner will make your job much easier for this part.
4. Plan Future Workouts
Ever wandered into the gym without a plan and had to make up your routine as you go along? This is not an effective way to train if you hope to achieve optimal results.
A busy schedule can quite often be the culprit that prevents you from planning your sessions in advance. A busy mind can distract you to the point that you forget which muscle group you are set to train.
However, if you use a fitness planner and at the end of each session write down the plan for your next training day, you can walk into the gym with a plan. This will make your sessions more efficient, freeing up more time for other jobs or activities. Less time will be spent in the gym as you know exactly what you need to do. A fitness planner will also remind you of the exercises you completed in the previous session. You do not have to worry about losing all the information you have listed.
5. Record Equally Important Health & Fitness Factors
We go into this in more depth in our Ultimate Guide To Tracking Progress, where we list the countless health factors that can easily be tracked to help you reach your goals more efficiently. There is a plethora of other information that many would regard as unnecessary to record or just supplementary information but it can really impact your results.
Recording measures like your sleep, what you eat, your energy levels and your general mood each day can help you analyze what works best for you. How much sleep do you need to workout more effectively? What changes have you made to your diet that have seen faster results? All of these records reveal useful insights for you.
Now, a planner can provide a space for all of these. You need a single tool that will help you gather all of this information and record it for the future. This information is useless alone, but consider it alongside all of the other data you collect and you can really begin to understand your body more comprehensively.
6. Plan Exercise Rest Days
If you are anything like me, you often forget the number of days that you have worked out. As well as the amount of rest that you have taken for the week. This is where a planner can come in very useful. It is quite often said that muscle is gained whilst we rest and not in the gym itself.
When you workout and your muscles are stimulated, you are causing micro-tears in the muscle fibers. Gains are not made until your muscles are rested. The body repairs and adapts the muscles to better handle the stimulus. By recording your sleep and training patterns, you will be able to understand your body signals and give your body the rest it needs. This should also help you manage and prevent injuries. This is why you need to record and plan your rest days.
Monitoring your health is very important. You will not understand the benefits you are getting from exercise and other activities if you do not write down your achievements. No matter how big or small these achievements are. Be vigilant and you will see how far you have come since you started to live a healthier lifestyle.
Guest Author Bio:
Ryan Varela is the CEO of Boost Health Insurance which provides customized and affordable health care plans for thousands of customers across the United States. Ryan has nearly a decade of experience in the healthcare industry. He continues to educate and deliver access to affordable options to those who need health care the most.
Image credits: Total Shape
Spartan Race Training Plan
