Documenting your fitness journey can be a powerful tool to motivate yourself to improve your fitness and wellbeing. Here are 5 reasons we recommend documenting. You’ve almost certainly seen some form of fitness journey documentation on social media. While the classic “before” and “after” photos can seem cringe-y to some, there are many benefits to documenting your fitness journey. Whether you share this with others or not is up to you, but gathering evidence of your progress can be a powerful tool on your journey to a healthier you.
It’s hard to notice changes in yourself.
You live in your body all day every day, so it can be difficult to notice the slow, incremental change that happens with fitness training. If you record your progress every week, 2 weeks, or even just once a month, you will be able to clearly see on paper how much progress you have made. This can be achieved a number of ways: you can take the classic front, back and side photos to see how your body changes, you can construct a fitness test for yourself and try to beat your PBs each month, or you can just keep a fitness journal of the workouts you do, and see how you increase your reps and exercise difficulty over time.
To see where you can improve.
If you document your progress by conducting a fitness test each month, you will be able to see which areas you are improving in, and which areas you are not. By seeing on paper the places that need improvement you will be able to better structure your workouts to address these areas and improve your overall fitness.
It will keep you motivated.
It can be fun to look back at the workouts you did when you first started and compare them to where you are 6 months down the track. Proving to yourself that you have improved in the past will motivate you to achieve your goals in the future.
It will help build a routine.
Consistency is everything! By documenting your workouts you are helping to cement healthy habits until it becomes routine. You can do this by writing about your fitness activities in a daily journal. Journaling is good for reflection. You can write about how you feel about the workouts/activities, if you beat a personal best that day, or you can simply transcribe what you did. You’ll find you don’t want to have too many blank pages in the diary from skipping days. This will keep you motivated to maintain your fitness routine on the days when it feels difficult to put on those gym shoes.
You could inspire someone else.
The current internet culture of showing your highlight reel on social media can make it feel difficult for people to start their fitness journeys. If you can share your fitness journey from day 1, you might inspire someone else. Sharing your fitness journey doesn’t necessarily mean posting bikini pictures on Facebook (although that can be empowering too!). You could share the first time you tried to run 3 km vs the first 8 km run you managed to complete. You could show the slow increase in the amount of push-ups you were able to do in a minute over months of fitness test results. No matter how you decide to document your fitness journey, the important thing is to never give up! Even if you have a day when you only do half your work out, or you don’t improve that much from your last fitness test, or you aren’t that happy with the person looking back at you in the mirror… don’t be afraid to document it. If you get through this bad day and still make progress later, it can help the future you push past that next barrier. There will always be ups and downs in your fitness journey, but documenting it for yourself can help you see your overall progress and keep you going!
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