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12 Things to Write About in Your Heroik Fitness Journal

thechivalrous — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 22:24:57 +0000

I often get asked about how I stay motivated to stay fit. My not-so-secret method is that I put forth a real effort into connecting to my health and fitness, in as many ways as I possibly can, to my happiness and everything I wish to achieve. I constantly find subtle ways to remind myself of the interdependencies between my health,fitness, and my happiness & productivity. One of the most under-utilized, under-appreciated and most important tool I use: a fitness journal. Here are some tips to add value to your journal and help you become aware of how your health and fitness play a significant role in your overall well being.

1. Don’t call it a workout journal!- If reduced to being thought of as merely notes of reps and sets, a journal is as pleasing to think of or look at as a math book. Give it substance and value by thinking all-around fitness and health. Put some words and thoughts behind all those numbers. There aren’t any rules or boundaries! This is about you, what you are doing and what you can do! It should be as much a trophy and motivational resource as it is a measuring stick.

2. Record what you do during your workouts.

This is the traditional how much you lift and how many times. This is where most people leave off and eventually, often enough stop writing in their journal. Why? Math is boring? No. There is more to creating value and convincing ourselves than writing down numbers alone.

3. Write down more than the math.

It’s important to track your weight and reps but there is more to your overall fitness and health than just the numbers. Write down how you feel, or what hurts and when it hurts.

4. Record what you do in addition to your workouts.

There are plenty of things that go on during your workout beyond reps and sets. Keep track of water intake/pre-workout routines. Make note of when you are board or taking too long to recover.

5. Create your own 5 star rating system for workouts and food

Example Workout Ratings: 5-extreme,4-great,3-good, 2-pick it up, 1-WTF

Write down workouts you consider to be a good, great and extreme workout. Try to stick to the 3-5 star rating for every day. Sometimes I have one too many WTF down days and make it up with an extreme workout. Perhaps the best part about creating your own workout rating system is that you’ll have a hard time rationalizing yourself out of what you need to do because you set your own rating based on your own workout standards, so it is based on things you know can do! If you are doing an extreme workout everyday and you aren’t dropping weight or getting stacked, maybe it’s time to redefine extreme and bump it up a couple of notches. The converse is also true. If you are stuck in a low 1-3 workout rating zone, maybe your standards are too high. Make adjustments as necessary.

Example Food Ratings 5-Bland,Raw and Gross but good for me, 4-Vegetables, fruits, lean meats, easy on carbs, 3- meat and potatoes 2-Better than fast food 1- I ate at In and Out and it was oh so good!

Write down healthy meals you eat and rate them according based on their healthiness. When you eat a 1 star meal on Monday- IE donuts and burgers and fries- compensate with 2 days of 4-5 star meals. This one requires little explanation and you likely know where your meals fit on this scale.

6. Use graphs.

Weekly graphs can show when you need to make up workouts/ increase intensity. These make it extremely apparent when you’ve had one too many WTF off days. Make it up with an extreme workout.

Monthly graphs are wonderfully motivational, visual badges of honor. They show your progress/decline so that you can compare weeks, identify trends and adjust workouts.

You can arrange your data by monitoring your weight, or as my personal preference monitor your 5 star workout rating system.

7. Create more lists:

-Things that motivate you. This way you’ll know what to grab, where to go, and what to listen to on your down days. You might think you’ll remember this stuff but when you need it most, you may not be in a mood to remember all the motivational elements.

-Things that interrupt your workout and action plans to work-around or compensate for those scenarios.

Make Checklists for your exercises. I derive a lot of satisfaction from checking an exercise from the list. Curls. Check! Here is a typical minimal entry for me. I plan my workouts and record what I’ve done or need to do. Sometimes I use a checklist to get myself through an otherwise seemingly dull workout.

8. Explain how to do exercises in your own words.

Taking time to write down how to correctly do an exercise will help you develop better awareness of what you are doing versus what your muscles should be doing. Pay attention to posture, write it down

9. Draw pictures.

Show yourself how to do it. You don’t need to be an artist to make stick figures. Keep in mind that it only needs to make sense to you. Add notes and arrows to show motions. Be sure to distinguish hands from feet and head. That one gets me everytime-no more no handed cartwheels for me

10. Write down class routines and take them home.

I’ll be the first to admit I pirate my workouts and bring the routines home. Shown above is a beginning Pilates routine that I wanted to practice at home.

11. Monitor foods that make you feel charged for your workouts.

It’s important to be aware of the connection between the food you eat and the energy that’s transferred.

12. Track your medical visits, injuries and recovery. Your doctor will thank you.

In short, the more effort you put into your fitness journal, the more value you’ll find in what you’ve been doing. The journal becomes a better trophy and your own personal reference guide to your health. You will find it harder to justify bailing on your diet or workout routine that you yourself create.

I’ve been on the mend from a recently pulled hamstring and I am sure to note how it feels after every stretch/run workout. This allows me to keep track of what helped my recovery and what hurt it.

Final Thoughts: You’re probably wondering what is a grown man doing with a Batman Journal? The answer is simply Inside every man is a playful boy yearning to explore. I enjoy embracing my inner child it keeps me energized.

Journal Entry-Catching Up

thechivalrous — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:00:24 +0000

Dear Journal,

I have been well. So so much to tell you. I have gone all Buddhist on the world and pursue the teachings as best I can. I have integrated my personal and professional personas to work and live simply and genuinely without the schizophrenia of separating the two. I finally found a fulfilling path with my career and life. I have yet to run out of things to study and contemplate. I have a good grip on impermanence and am trying to develop a deeper understanding of appreciation. The cool thing about all that is that I am free of most obsessive materialistic behaviors and am not as easily swayed to possess novelties. On the downside, I still don’t know how to write short letters- as you can see, but you and I rarely speak so please forgive the length.

I climbed my first official mountain (Mt. Rose) two weeks ago with two friends. It was part of my training and preparation to climb Mt. Shasta next month. My closest friend and action junkie,Micah and I were really unprepared. Our planned route was supposed to be a class 1 climb- the equivalent of a nice uphill hike. So Micah and I thought, spring weather, sun and fun in Tahoe. We wore cargo pants but had the sense to bring snow shoes and weatherproof jackets. The ACTUAL route we ended up taking, the steepest part approach up the mountain, was a class 3-4. Our experienced Sherpa, Micah’s Bro, stopped half-way up, leaving us to face the steeper and colder half alone. I am still the same tenacious and determined individual I was long ago and it still gets me into trouble from time to time, and this was to be no exception. 3/4 the way up, we had to ditch our snow shoes and climb up through rocks and brush. Then we had to remove our gloves and climb the 20-30 feet granite faces to continue. We did all of this, against my better judgment, with no climbing gear and no helmets.

On top of all of that I left the photography-(which I am quite good at) to Micah (who is an engineer) and the little photographic evidence we escaped with was not meant for the picture frame. It was fun glaciating down the mountain-(french for sliding on your ass)but extremely harsh on the backside when wearing cotton pants. Micah nicked his chin almost cutting his throat with his ice axe when he went from a back to belly slide. He managed to escape death twice with that axe and we made it down safely. I looked back and could see the scarred imprints all the way down the mountain side and felt guilty like I just tagged a wall with graffiti. Soaking wet, with frost-bite setting in, we crossed a snow bridge over a stream and up a hill back to the truck. All in all it was an epic trip full of laughs, extreme danger, and all the other male bonding rituals. Leave it to me to transform what mountaineers would call a day in the woods into a perilous adventure. I had fun at least.

I just got back from a trip to the Mojave Desert and Ridge Crest, with Micah, his GF, and my 70lb, on the lap the whole way, half-lab, half Dane pup Trooper. I’ll post some photos soon (nabbed some good ones with my SLR). After a few days of craziness on the quads, I learned how to ride a dirt bike on the trails-which is completely different from the street bikes. I guess there are 3x as many Mojave greens this year-(one of the world’s most deadliest snakes), so we had to be more careful than the last time but that didn’t stop Micah from leading us on a night ride where we all got lost on a forgotten, overgrown, trail. Quite the adventure and I loved it.

I think the strangest thing in the desert is not being able to go outside because it is too windy. The sun is out. The temperature is nice but the wind is blasting @ 70mph! How strange. The sand and dust flying around make it bad for your eyes and worse for your hair. My hair was long until recently and the windblown look made me feel like a mad scientist.

I plan on going sailing on Saturday if the weather permits, we’ll see fingers crossed.

As for the more business and community side of the adventure My new year’s resolutions were to shift more to the creative side of technology and to help 10 companies with community and super culture, and I ended up creating a company focused community and social media.

I partnered with an engineer, a programmer and a designer to form a new company, Heroik IT Solutions (www.getheroik.com) (Get Heroik- get it) Our tag line is Community is our Calling and Technology, Our Super Power. It is cheesy, funny, catchy and easy to market. I am well on my way to meeting my goal and resolution. The site isn’t up yet but it’s all in the works. I designed the logo and all the blogs and what not. One of the revelations I try to share with any professional I know is the overwhelming importance of the ability of a professional of any sort to communicate visually.

We are focused on leveraging social media for business. We are bidding on an iPhone app for Green Owl Records, designing and managing the social presence, twitter campaigns and a zillion other things for a musician and helping him market his custom built guitars, an Ocean Grown Distributor (a chemical free nutrient dense agricultural product) as well as several less interesting clients like lobbyists and PR firms.

Ocean Grown is kind of a cool product that does great things for farms, saves the farmers a ton of cash, and keeps the chemicals and crap out of our food and environment. My musician client, is a friend of mine who I write songs with, he comes up with the music. His wife and I finally pressured him into turning his guitar making hobby into a business. By sheer luck, I got to personally meet, get to know and spend time with a popular, known, but still up and coming band (Dead Confederate) and their manager. The band is from Georgia, they have great manners, cool accents a few long beards, and a good sound. They were eager to talk and we spoke all night and even after their performance. Surprisingly good people for a rock band. The lead guitarist also makes his own guitars and will be Kynan’s first customer.

I guess the coolest thing about my job is the “green” and cool clients we get to work with and the fact that we build communities, rally the troops and offer affordable solutions that can help or even save struggling businesses.

I sold my first batch of workshops on a stick- DLAK Digital Liquidity Awareness Kit- part of the digital liquidity project- which I revisited, refined re-designed and re-wrote. @ $20 a pop, they are helping me pay down my debt. I am working on 2 new books/workshops/ digital products, and am still fighting to get the first 2 published.

Today, my proposal was approved by the board of a non-profit Extreme Finances (helps educate and empower people with basic financial skills and debt management resources). We will be building them a web community and training their staff to manage their staff to leverage their social presence and to pool existing media resources to reach and assist more people in need.

I am struggling to schedule cafe computer clinics for students who can’t afford costly repairs and what not. Hopefully I’ll put a few dates on the calendar. The new gig makes it more challenging and more important to offer services and solutions to those most in need who don’t have the means to pay for our premium products and services. It is a love/hate issue with my partners but was made a clear principle of the company and an integral part of our professional identity.

I am focused on automating and outsourcing my obligations and hope to train a replacement and sell the company. While doing all this I still apply for other gigs with start ups, advise a few, most recently FreePath (google it, I can get it to you for free) That’s kinda it in a nutshell. To answer question- No, I’ve not seen that show but I’ve heard of it and will probably finish half a season in the time it takes you to read this message. lol.

Anyway, I am always on the look out for portfolio projects, brand evangelists, and those in need. So if you kno anyone who could use some free help in social media to grow business, and they are good at talking up a good company. Send them my way.

Honestly, I couldn’t and probably wouldn’t have done half of this stuff if I never met you. Thanks for always being an inspiration. I hope all is well, shiny, fun, exciting and mysterious in your life too.

-Nicholas (hahah I love self-appreciation and sarcasm)

P.S. Buy the 4 Hour Work Week, the book and the audiobook version, good stuff that will change your life.