A fitness diary is a great way to track increasing fitness levels, weight loss or gain, mood and performance in all sorts of activity. Use this spreadsheet as a starter for your fitness diary. The document can be modified to suit your interests and to reflect your changing goals. 

The idea is to record your activity each day. I like to swim, ride and run, so these are the activities I track. My diary includes date, swim (time/distance/sec per 50m), cycle (time/distance/min per km), run cycle (time/distance/min per km), strength (time), stretches (time), weight, fat %, water %, muscle %, resting HR, training HR (average), blood pressure and comments. I like to make sure I stretch and spend some time with free weights, but it is not one of my main goals. If you are really interested in strength training you may wish to track the weights and reps. I’m sure you get the drift. 

The comments field is to record how you are feeling, the weather, a special run or ride etc. When you look back over your diary in months to come, your comments may help you make sense of a particularly great or poor ride time. 

Keeping track of your weight is always a good idea, even if weight control is not a main goal of yours... 

Keeping track of your weight is always a good idea, even if weight control is not a main goal of yours. Scales can be quite clever; new designs use inductive measurement between your two bare feet to calculate the %fat, %water and %muscle in your body. Some scales allow you to nominate the height, sex, age of the whole family, and will show whether the weight etc is within a normal range. We are not totally convinced of their absolute accuracy, but they certainly show a gratifying trend. They are well worth the investment (around $100), and can show you if you are dehydrated. So measure your height and enter your details on your new set of scales. Keep the scales on a hard surface; your bathroom tiled floor is perfect. Measurements can be affected by carpet and other soft surfaces. Weigh yourself naked or in light underwear, in the morning before exercise or eating. You should weigh yourself regularly at the same time, say once or twice a week. 

Start your Fitness diary by entering the date of week 1, date of birth, height, weight and %fat, %water, %muscle (if your scales show this). In the morning before you get out of bed, take your resting heart rate. You can do this by using an electronic heart rate monitor (if you have one) or by taking a watch and counting your heart beats for 15 seconds. Multiply this amount by 4 to get your heart rate /min. Write your resting heart rate in your diary. This is good to record, because your resting heart rate is a good indicator of your fitness. As you get fitter the rate will get lower. An elite athlete may have a heart rate of 50 or even lower. 

If you wish to keep track of your measurements, either to watch a waist get smaller or biceps get bigger, grab a tape measure and measure away! 

If you or your doctor is concerned about your blood pressure, you may wish to personally monitor your blood pressure with a portable electronic monitor, available from a chemist or online for around $120. Keeping a record of your blood pressure is a great way to convince your doctor that you don’t need to go on medication, or even come off medication you may have been on for years. 

With your spreadsheet, you can graph any of the data that you record. On the second tab we have included a graph to plot your weight, to start you off. In the same vein, you could monitor your time taken to cycle your favourite ride or time to swim 1000m. 

You can modify your training diary to record any special goals; for example you may wish to ride the Around the Bay in a Day 220km ride. This is a major achievement for most people and most would need to train for this goal. Your diary can help you set clear goals and help show progress.