TRAINING TIPS - WRITE IT DOWN

By Natural Mr. Olympia, John Hansen:  August 28, 2000

Recording Your Workouts - One of the best ways to continually make progress in your training is to record your workouts. Writing down each workout lets you know not only where you are at but where you are going. It's important to record the poundage that you used along with the number of sets and reps that you performed.

Each workout I do, I try to better the last workout by doing either more reps or more weight. Although it may not always be possible to make every workout better than the last one, having the intention of making that happen is the best way to make continual progress.

Three time Mr. Olympia winner Frank Zane was always a big believer in recording his workouts. Frank would plan each year out, culminating with a peak at the Mr. Olympia contest in the fall. Throughout the year, Frank would look at the previous year's workout journal and try to improve on that. If his workouts were heavier and stronger than last years, Frank knew he was right on track to improving his physique for this years contest.

Dorian Yates is another bodybuilder who also believes in writing down each one of his workouts in a training diary. In his excellent book, "Blood and Guts", Dorian writes that his training log gives him feedback as to which exercises, sets, reps and weights are working or not working. He also says that his training logs have become a blueprint on what works and what doesn't for his body.

The way I use my training notebook is to set up mini-cycles in the off-season. Since it is unreasonable to expect to increase poundages every workout over the course of a year (especially for an advanced bodybuilder such as myself), I will instead have a cycle of workouts that lasts for 6-8 weeks. During this training cycle, I will limit the exercises to only the basic ones and keep the sets low. I will attempt to use heavier weights with each workout during the course of this cycle. This makes it mentally easier to use more weight with each workout since I know in my mind that it is only for a limited amount of time (6-8 weeks).

After the cycle is completed, I will take a 5-7 day rest from the weights and let my body recuperate. When I begin training again, I will use different exercises or have a different goal in mind and do the same thing with another mini-cycle. In each case, my training diary is a very important component to making progress in my strength and size increases.

When I am preparing for competition, I will use the training diary in a different way. Since I am limiting my calories and losing weight, gaining strength on a weekly basis is much more difficult. However, I will look at the poundages I used in the last workout and try to improve on that by either increasing the weights or the reps. This way, I am insuring that my pre-contest workouts are very high in intensity and I will maintain the maximum amount of muscle mass possible as I lose bodyfat.

If you haven't started using a training log yet, I highly recommend that you start. Just buy a small notebook and throw it in your gym bag. Write down the exercises you use, how much weight you are using, the amount of reps and sets that you utilize. I even record the total amount of sets that I am using for the whole workout. I usually keep my training log in my gym bag and go back and record the sets I just did after doing about 3 sets. This way I don't have to lug my notebook along with me during the workout but I am still aware of what I want to do for my next sets and I am also recording the current workout.

Write it down, you won't be sorry!