Why Tracking Your Workouts is Essential for Building Strength and Muscle

Check out my YouTube video or read the blog below

If you're serious about wanting strength gains and building muscle, tracking your workouts is a game-changer. I used to work with different coaches who never emphasized tracking sets, reps, and weights. It wasn’t until my last coach in my last bodybuilding prep insisted on recording every detail that I realized how much of a difference it made.

Why Tracking Matters

Progress Monitoring: Tracking helps you know exactly where you left off, eliminating guesswork and saving time between sessions
Progressive Overload: You can gradually increase your weights, reps or rest period to challenge your muscles.
Consistency & Accountability: Staying consistent is easier when you document your progress.

Why I Don’t Use My Phone to Track Workouts

Although many people prefer tracking apps, I prefer going old school and I stick to a notebook and pen at the gym instead of tracking on my phone. Here are a few reasons why I prefer to not use my phone to track:

Less Screen Time: I’m already on my phone enough throughout the day, so I like to disconnect at the gym.
No Distractions: Checking my phone after every set makes it too easy to get distracted by notifications.
More Intentional Tracking: I can freeform anything I want on a piece of paper. Meaning if there are notes I want to record for a specific exercise or just in general for the workout I'm not confined by the structure of the app.

How I Track My Workouts:

Exercise List: I label each exercise as A, B, C, etc., in order of how I perform them.
Sets, Reps & Weight: For each exercise, I record the number of sets, reps, and the weight I’m using. If I’m using a barbell with weight plates, I list the individual plate weight AND the total weight (e.g., 35 lbs on each side for a total of 70 lbs). That way there is minimal thinking needed on my next sessions.
Notes & Adjustments: I add notes about seat settings, adjustments to machines, or any modifications to form. This also eliminates guesswork for the next workout.
Weekly Comparisons: I can easily compare progress week over week. If I lifted 15 lbs for 3 sets of 15 reps last week, I know exactly what I did and where I can increase reps, weight, or volume.

I know this is incredibly hard to read (you would never know by my handwriting that I went to Catholic School for over 9 years), BUT visually, you get the idea of how I write my workouts down.

Example of Progression in Action

Let’s take an example from my recent workouts. During week one, I performed (3) sets of 15 reps using 15-pound dumbbells for dumbbell flys. The following week, instead of increasing the weight, I decided to increase the volume by pushing for (3) sets of 20 reps while maintaining the same weight.

By week three, I felt stronger and ready to challenge myself, so I bumped the weight up to 20-pound dumbbells but went back to (3) sets of 15 reps to maintain good form. This method of gradual progression—either by increasing reps, weight, or both—ensures that I’m constantly challenging my muscles without overloading them too quickly.

Had I not tracked this progression, I wouldn’t have known exactly where I left off or when to increase the intensity. And because of the template I've found that works for me, I was very easily about to see what my previous week sets/reps were. This process has been key in building strength and maintaining consistency in my workouts.