Training Tip #9: Monitor Your Training

Tip number 9 links closely with the previous tip on recovery and adaptation. Here we’ll talk about the importance of recording and monitoring training, and what you may want to keep a record of as you go along.

Keeping a record of training is easy and important to get into the habit of. Even if the only thing you do it to keep a simple training diary detailing basics of your workout each day, that can be used effectively to log improvements over time and see how you’ve progressed. Often, progression is slow and you can become disheartened when you hit a plateau that seems to last for a while, so it can be good to look back at your training log from a few months ago to give yourself a boost when you see that you have actually progressed.

Used more scientifically, if you can look back at your training log leading into a prior event and note your performance in that event, you can start to predict how you might perform in an upcoming event based on your current training. This can work well for races where you may look to set a pacing strategy for example.

Going slightly deeper into recording and monitoring your training, the next layer to add is some indication of how you felt during a training block will allow you to plan future training at the right volumes and intensities. Key things to note down would be things such as muscle soreness each day, general energy, any illness symptoms and of course injuries. Along with that, you could make a note of how well and how long you sleep, and give yourself a rating for nutrition for each day. Adding these layers of complexity into a training diary will allow you to look back and explain days where you didn’t feel so great. It’s important to know if you felt sore and tired due to inappropriate training, or because you were sleeping poorly and not eating well.

The tips above are really the basics of a sport science program that are quite easy to do yourself and really useful to get into the habit of doing. Over the past few years, technology has become more accessible and can greatly influence how you might want to monitor your training. There are many fitness trackers which will monitor most of the above for you which is a great step forward, but if you choose to use one make sure you take time to understand what it is monitoring and that you can interpret the data to influence your future training.