Keeping a training log worth keeping

Most training logs are diaries: a record of what happened that nobody reads twice. A log is worth keeping only if it answers questions you cannot answer without it — and there are three of those, all invisible week to week and obvious over a season.

The three questions

Is the weight actually going up? Not since last Tuesday — over months. A top set moves more between a good night's sleep and a bad one than a fortnight of training moves it, so the week-to-week signal is almost entirely noise. Fitted over a dozen sessions it is not.

Did the work I planned actually happen? Almost everyone's honest answer is "less than I thought", and the gap is usually not missed sessions — it is sets that stopped well short of hard. You cannot see that without counting.

Is the scale moving at the rate my deadline needs? A goal without a date has no failure condition. With one, it divides into a rate, and the rate can be checked against what bodies actually do.

Everything else a log can record — how you felt, the music, the weather — is diary. Keep it if you enjoy it, but it is not what makes the log useful.

What to write down, and what not to bother with

Per set: the weight, the reps, and roughly how many more you could have done. That last one is the field people skip and it is the one that makes the rest mean anything. Five reps with three left in the tank and five reps with nothing left are not the same set, and a log that cannot tell them apart will show you a flat line through a block where you got considerably stronger — or a rising one through a block where you just started pushing harder.

You do not need: rest times to the second, every warm-up set, bar speed, or a note on every session. Record the working sets and move on. A log that takes four minutes to fill in stops getting filled in, and an incomplete log is worse than a simple one because the gaps look like missed training.

Hard sets, and why your count is lower than you think

A set counts as hard when it finishes within about two reps of the point where another one was not happening. That is the unit almost all the training research is denominated in, and it is why "ten to twenty hard sets per muscle per week" is a meaningful sentence while "ten to twenty sets" is not.

When people count honestly for the first time, the number is usually about half what they assumed. A session can feel long and busy and contain four hard sets. If your logged hard sets come out far below what you planned, that is the likely reason — not missed sessions, but sets that stopped three or four reps early because the next one looked unpleasant.

Why a trend needs more points than you want it to

Three sessions will always give you a confident-looking slope, because any three points lie near some line. It tells you nothing. Four is the fewest that supports a direction at all, and even then the right question is whether the slope is bigger than the scatter around it. "Going up" and "not yet distinguishable from noise" are different answers and only one of them should change what you do.

This matters most when things are going badly. A fortnight of poor sleep drops a top set by more than a fortnight of training raises it, and a log read impatiently will tell you a programme has stopped working when it has not. The honest reading is almost always: wait for more sessions.

Putting a date on a weight goal

"Lose eight kilos" is a wish. "Lose eight kilos by the first of June" is arithmetic: it divides into a weekly rate, and the rate can be checked against what is physically available.

• Losing. Roughly one per cent of bodyweight a week is the most that comes off without taking muscle with it. Half a per cent is comfortable and much easier to sustain. Anything past one per cent, and the difference between the number you wanted and the number that is possible comes out of lean tissue.
• Gaining. Far slower than almost anyone expects. Somebody genuinely new might add half a per cent of bodyweight a week as mostly muscle; after a year it is a fraction of that. Faster than that is mostly fat, which some people choose deliberately — but it should be a choice rather than a surprise.

What this usually reveals is that the goal is fine and the date is the problem. That is a much easier thing to fix, and it is better found in week one than week nine.

Backing it up, because nobody else is

A log that lives only in a browser lives exactly as long as that browser's stored data. Clearing site data, a new phone, a browser tidying up after itself — any of these take months of records with them, and there is no support desk to ask. If a tool keeps your data on your device, that privacy comes with one obligation: download a backup occasionally and keep it where you keep photographs.

It is worth checking that a backup actually restores before you need it. A file you have never opened is a file you are only assuming works.

Doing it without handing over your training history

The Training Log does all of the above in your browser: every set, every weigh-in, hard sets counted against what the planner asked for, personal records, a fitted trend per lift that refuses to draw one too early, and a weight goal checked against its own deadline. One file holds the lot and restores on any device. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account.

Related: Muscle Building Planner for what to do, and Weight Trend & Adaptive Calories for working out what you actually burn from the same weigh-ins.