The other day I was approached by my son’s track and field coach and she, in the kindest way possible, asked my son to leave the team.  As she put it: “His heart doesn’t appear to be in it”.  This was odd to me, because he had previously been enthusiastic, engaged and energized by his practices which are all signs of a congruent lifestyle alignment.I put myself in the coach’s shoes to understand her experience with him.  She explained to me that he use to come to practice and would try really hard but that in the last month he was coming up with excuse after excuse as to why he couldn’t participate.  She said she tried everything to get him engaged (and I’m sure she did), but that he was bringing bad energy to the team and she couldn’t have that around the other athletes any longer.  Fair enough.  I could see how from her vantage point it would appear that his heart wasn’t in it.

Know Where You Were & Measuring Improvement. Logging and tracking your results becomes like a time capsule for your time in the gym. Think about it: You spend a lot of time there, and like watching your own kids ‘grow up’—it’s sometimes hard to see the day to day changes, as opposed to when your parents come for their bi-annual visit and notice the noticeable changes in their stature, growth and development from this time last year. It’s easy to forget where you once were. A log allows you to reflect and acknowledge progress each and every step along the way. In addition, it gives you a baseline to work from—knowing that even 2-weeks ago, you bench pressed 185 for 5-reps with a 20X1 tempo, and this week, you are aiming to bench the same amount of weight, but this time with a 40X1 tempo. It allows for progress while preventing you fromovershooting (for instance: slapping 225 on the bench this week and attempting the same rep-scheme, or warming up with 135 lbs. on your backsquat when you know your 1-rep-max is currently 165 lbs.—that is not a warmup weight).