If you’re serious about your fitness goals, tracking your progress is essential. By monitoring your performance and fitness data, you can identify areas of improvement, stay motivated, and adjust your workouts accordingly. After all, if you don’t know what you did, how are you going to know what to do? In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of tracking your gym workouts and the best methods and apps for fitness tracking.

Why Track Your Gym Workouts?

There are many reasons why tracking your gym workouts is important. Here are some of the key reasons we at VT2 fitness advocate workout tracking as an essential ingredient to getting results:

1. Goal Setting: Tracking your performance helps you set achievable fitness goals, whether it’s improving your strength, endurance, or overall fitness.
2. Motivation: When you see progress over time, it can be incredibly motivating and help you stay on track with your fitness routine. Just hit a new PR? Just hit a target weight? Seeing it there in black and white can often be a great motivator in seeing how far you have come!
3. Accountability: Tracking your workouts helps you stay accountable to yourself and your fitness goals. It is a pretty noticeable gap in your tracking activity if you end up missing a workout!
4. Performance Improvement: By tracking your workouts, you can identify areas where you need to improve and adjust your routine to achieve better results. Tracking is also an absolute imperative when it comes to the core principles of Periodisation and Progression

Best Methods for Tracking Fitness Data

So we have established that tracking your fitness data is a good thing, but exactly how do you go about doing this? Well there are a number of methods ranging from good old fashioned pen and paper to sophisticated fitness tracking apps and wearable technology.

1. Fitness Tracker: Fitness trackers are big business currently and are essentially wearable pieces of technology that track your activity level, heart rate, and other fitness metrics. Some of the most popular fitness trackers include Fitbit, Garmin, and Apple Watch. I personally use a Fitbit Versa 3 due to its versatility and in-built HIIT workout timer which makes building workouts and teaching classes far more seamless. However the key metrics you are looking to track are heart rate, steps and sleep quality. If your fitness tracker of choice incorporates these 3 elements then you are certainly on the right track!
2. Workout Log: A workout log is a simple and effective way to track your gym workouts. You can record your exercises, sets, and reps, as well as your progress over time. In terms of workout logging, you have a number of options ranging from good old fashioned pen and paper to sophisticated tracking apps. I tend to take a middle road on this and have designed my own spreadsheet tracker. This gives me all the metrics I need to track in one place without having to navigate a complex UI or pay a monthly subscription. You can find the spreadsheet I use here, or feel free to design your own.
3. Fitness Apps: There are many fitness apps available that can help you track your workouts, nutrition, and other fitness data. Some of the best fitness apps include MyFitnessPal for calorie tracking and Strong and Fitbod for weightlifting.

Best Fitness Tracking App

If you’re looking for the best fitness tracker app, here are some of the most popular options:

1. MyFitnessPal: MyFitnessPal is a free app that tracks your food intake, exercise, and other health metrics. It has a large database of foods and exercises, making it easy to track your daily nutrition and keep track of those all important macros!
2. Strong: Strong is a weightlifting app that helps you track your workouts, sets, reps, and weights. It also includes a rest timer and a history log, making it easy to monitor your progress over time.
3. Fitbod: Fitbod is a personalized fitness app that creates custom workout plans based on your fitness goals and workout history. It also tracks your progress and adjusts your workouts accordingly.

Summary

Tracking your gym workouts and fitness data is essential for achieving your fitness goals. By using the best methods and apps for fitness tracking, you can stay motivated, accountable, and on track with your fitness routine. So use these tools to your advantage and smash your fitness goals.