Fitness and Measuring Everything

After spending a good portion of my life not caring about keeping track of my exercises, calories, weight lifted, miles ran, etc. I've come to the conclusion that that just doesn't suffice anymore.  Without a doubt in my mind, I'm pretty healthy: I eat good, excercise frequently, and enjoy rock climbing.  When trying to enact change like gain weight, losing weight, run a 6 minute mile, and climb harder routes one must properly measure the progress being vs the goals.

Generally speaking, one can't efficiently change something they can't measure.  The same holds true for workouts, health, lifting, you name it.  Students gain a clear understanding of their performance by receiving grades on homework and tests.  Although debatable, this is an objective way for students to tell if they are meeting their goals.  I'm going to test the methodology and apply it to my physical activity.

I read an article by Tim Ferris that described his "arguably exaggerated" journey in gaining 34-lbs of muscle in 28 days.  Despite this incredible feat, he brings up some very interesting points; namely, he says "6. Record every workout in detail, including date, time of day, order of exercises, reps, and weight. Remember that this is an experiment, and you need to control the variables to accurately assess progress and make adjustments."  I'm also keeping track of food (carb, protein, fat) intake as they are useful measure to gauge progress of change as well. 

I'm attempting to keep track of the variables by using a service called Gyminee (www.gyminee.com).  It does a pretty decent job of keeping track of food, workouts, and personal goals.  I'll be experimenting with the service for the summer and see how it works out for me.  Initially, I can tell that it doesn't have some basic excercises in its database and it has been ridiculously slow for some reason, but I'm going to stick with it and see how it works for my lifestyle.

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