Charting fitness progress: necessary?

In this entry, want to explore the necessity of fitness charting, i.e., of keeping various charts, devising graphs, or even writing a fitness diary. I will play devil's advocate here since I do not myself do such charting and feel I have good reasons for it. But you are not me and you may have good reasons for charting your fitness pursuits. I will later spell out some scenarios where I think fitness charting could be helpful.

Many fitness instructors and a lot of fitness literature harp on the theme of tracking your fitness. You are told to keep track of (write down) how many repetitions you did on a given day with how much weight, how you felt that day, and so forth. Diet diaries are likewise often encouraged. Tony Horton, as a case in point, keeps stressing the importance of keeping such charts as he instructs the P90X participants.

I considered doing something like this when I started my strength-training regime about 1.5 years ago but decided against it. I decided that the most important thing to me is not how much weight I lifted how many times, but rather how I felt after the workout: did I work up a good sweat?; did my arm muscles tremble from the strain I'd made?; did I notice pumped muscles when looking in the mirror afterwards? If those sorts of criteria were met, I decided, I'd had a good workout and my health was benefiting. That would be the only form of charting I'd need, I decided.

That's really the rule of thumb I've been following in my strength-training workouts since and if I've made some mistake in adopting that approach, I have yet to find out what it is. I've developed some muscle tone, lost a little fat (didn't have much to lose as you'll know if you've read my previous entries) and felt that my health has benefited. I really don't see what thing of value charting might have added.

That said, I am able to keep track of certain numbers in my head. I know, for example, about how many push-ups, chin-ups, bicycle crunches, or chair dips I can do at maximum. I also have a good idea of how much weight I should use for 15 repetitions of, say, bicep curls or "lawn mowers." In some cases I can remember how many I could do the first few times I tried these exercises as opposed to how many I can do now. I don't know, maybe there are folks that can't keep those kinds of numbers in their heads and who could therefore benefit from charting all that?

My suspicion, though, is that except below a certain level of fitness, these charts are used mainly for vanity purposes. And I think they simultaneously play into the marketing strategy of commercial exercise regimes like P90X: if you can get people comparing numbers, you'll stimulate consumer competitions in connection with your product. That's the way another line of business I know fairly well--computer sales--works: oh, he's got a 3 gigahertz, but I've only got a 2.9 gigahertz so I better go out and buy a new one so I'll have something better.

The upshot of the position I'm voicing on the matter of fitness charting, then, is that it's not crucial to getting more healthy or to maintaining health. Certainly for me, as someone already in reasonable shape and with no need to lose any weight, this has been true.

That said, I do think there's a place for fitness charting. My guess is that, if someone is really out of shape and so has to start off their fitness pursuits really slowly, they could get discouraged early on by an apparent lack of progress. Perhaps, going back over their charts, they would come to see that, although they're still fat, they are doing more repetitions and/or listing more weight than when they started. And this could help sustain their dedication to exercise. I suppose, given the state of American society--which now seems to tend largely toward obesity--this scenario could apply to a majority of people looking for fitness solutions.

In this same vein, I know that keeping a diary can be helpful to dieting. My wife finally got serious about dieting and exercise and has dropped about 40 pounds and she records her food intake religiously. It does seem to have helped her.

Another scenario where fitness charting could be helpful is in the case of professional athletes who are trying to better their performance. Being in peak form is their job, after all, and the more effectively they can do that, or any competitive edge they may attain, the more enhanced will be their professional existence.

In the final analysis, then, fitness charting has its uses. I think as a general rule, the more out-of-shape one is when embarking on a fitness regime, the more helpful it is likely to be. For average folks that are not professional athletes and that are not badly out of shape or have already been doing fitness for a time, it's quite optional and is likely to do little or nothing for them in terms of health. In these cases, it is usually done either out of vanity or some sort of obsessiveness.

Your thoughts on this topic?