What to record in a training log, and what to skip

The temptation with a training log is to record everything, on the theory that more data is better. It is not: fields you fill in inconsistently are worse than fields you never had, because they invite conclusions the data cannot support.

Here is what earns its place.

The four that matter

Exercise name. Consistent and specific. "Incline dumbbell press" every session. A log that records the same movement under three names cannot show you a trend, which is the entire purpose.

Weight. As loaded. If you use a machine with a stack, record the pin position and note the machine, because stacks are not standardised between gyms.

Repetitions. What you actually did. A planned set of eight that became six is a six. Logging the plan rather than the outcome is the most common way a log becomes fiction.

Effort. One digit: reps in reserve, or RPE. This is the field that turns 100 kg × 5 into information. Two RIR means there is room; zero means there is not, and next week's decision is completely different in each case. The scales are in RPE and RIR: how to rate a set you just did.

Worth adding

Bodyweight, daily or most days. Not part of the training entry, and it belongs in the same record, because strength going up while weight holds flat means something specific — see how to read real progress out of a training log.

A short note when something happened. "Slept four hours." "Right elbow sore on the second set." "Changed grip width." Three or four words. These are the entries you will be grateful for in three months when you are trying to work out when an ache started.

Which side, for unilateral work, if there is an imbalance you are tracking.

Not worth adding

Calories burned. The estimates are poor, they vary by 30 per cent or more between devices, and their main effect is to encourage treating training as a way to offset food. The full case is in are the calories-burned numbers worth anything.

Total tonnage. Sets × reps × weight is precise and misleading: it rewards high-repetition light work over hard sets, and two sessions with identical tonnage can be entirely different stimuli. Count hard sets instead — training volume or intensity: what to track.

Rest times, unless density is the variable you are deliberately manipulating during a specific block. Otherwise it is a field filled in half the time.

Heart rate during lifting. Interesting and not actionable.

Long reflections. A training log is not a journal. Mixing them means you stop keeping both.

Why the effort field is worth arguing for

Most people skip it because it feels subjective. That is exactly what makes it valuable.

Weight and reps describe what happened to the bar. Effort describes what happened to you, and the same external load represents a different stimulus on a day when you slept four hours than on one when you slept eight.

Without it, a log shows a flat line — 100 kg for five, three weeks running — and you cannot tell whether that is stagnation or a body getting stronger under an unchanged load. With it, 100 × 5 @ 0, then @ 1, then @ 2 is a clear upward trend that would otherwise be invisible.

Beginners rate poorly, usually underestimating how many repetitions they had left. That improves with a few months of practice and occasional sets taken to genuine failure, and an imperfect rating recorded consistently is still more useful than none.

Warm-up sets

Record them or do not — it matters less than being consistent about it.

The argument for recording: they are part of the session's fatigue, and in a long-term log they show how your warm-up progression has changed.

The argument against: they clutter the record and nobody reads them. Most people log working sets only, and mark the first working set clearly.

Programme structure

Worth writing down once per block rather than per session: what the programme is, how many weeks it runs, what the progression rule is, when the deload falls.

Without that, a log is a list of sessions with no plan behind it, and you are making the load decision from scratch every week rather than following something. The decision rules themselves are in progressive overload, in numbers you can check.

The test for any field

Ask: will I look at this in a week, and will it change what I do?

Weight, reps and effort pass. Bodyweight passes. A note about a sore shoulder passes. Calories burned, tonnage and heart rate do not, for most people, most of the time.

That test also keeps the log fast enough to actually keep, which is the constraint that beats every other consideration — as argued in how to log your workouts in under a minute.