How do you Record Your Fitness Results and Progress?
Let’s face it, recording your results and progress is not a difficult thing to do. All you need is a pen and paper, the ability to write the truth and a concept of time to record the date. There you have it, your very own free record of what you have been up to.
We do try and promote the idea of recording your weight, body fat, muscle size, times on gym equipment, food diary and anything else that may help you towards your goal. It is a great way to get motivated, even if the results are not always as good as you were hoping for. You will also get to see where you are going wrong, especially if you are keeping a very honest food diary.
We have currently been researching websites that replace the ordinary pen and paper and offer so much more. Rather than give you a list of possibilities we are going to stand by our well educated convictions and give you the very best we have found.
Introducing Gyminee.com
Gyminee.com is a brand spanking new company bringing a new view on your healthy lifestyle journey. They have done their homework by getting advice from fitness professionals to make sure they cover all areas that they think are important to help people reach their goals. This is not just a simple “record your data” type website, it offers a lot lot more and the best bit is that it is free! (same as the pen and paper – Beeble).
Key Features:
- Fitness and exercise tracking – measure and record your progress
- Diet and food tracking – measure more than just your calories
- Gyminee on the move – use your iPhone to gain full access to your account
- Workout routines – follow exercise routines for your goals
- GymBuddies and groups – enlist your friends or join like minded people
Beeble’s Favourite bits
There are so many bits we like about this website we are not really sure where to start. So we will start with our favourites:
The iPhone
The iPhone has to be our favourite feature without a doubt, not only because it uses the very slick and sexy looking iPhone but it means you can take your account with you anywhere you go. This is going to be great for taking down what you eat in a meal when you are away from your beloved computer and because of the way the iPhone works it is in connection with the Gyminee servers and so updates all your information directly.
I ‘m not stopping yet about the iPhone as it has another major advantage and that is a gym-based one. After you have set up your workout routine on the computer you can access it through your iPhone at the gym. Of course you can do this with your trusty pen and paper but the iPhone way has an advantage: you can watch videos of the exercise being performed so that you get the technique spot on. No more forgetting what the exercise is and no more randomly making one up that you think will be close to what it means (Yes, I’ve been watching you! – Beeble). Also seeing as you have the iPhone with you at the gym you will also be able to note down all your times and weights you have achieved in that workout. This seems like a great reason to go out and buy an iPhone.
Exercise Videos
Our second favourite is one we have already covered with the iPhone and that is having the videos of the exercises in your program. They have a great database of exercises and so should have a video for most of the exercises you will do. This is an option we love because technique is one of the most important points in exercise. It helps you to get the most out of every exercise on a results basis and also keeps you from injuring yourself, which as we all know will keep you from your training longer than nearly anything else and that is not a way to get the results you want!
Food Database
Finally, and I say finally because otherwise this post would go on for ever, we love the food database. So not only can you monitor your calorie intake but also your proteins, carbohydrates and other important food quotas. What if you can’t find your food in their extensive database of 13,000 foods? Well you just add it of course by reading the contents on the label on the food item you purchased. Keeping a food diary is one of the most important tasks you should do if your goals is to lose weight or gain weight. More often than not it is our diets that lead to significant weight gain or loss and therefore by changing these we will see the biggest improvement. Sounds easy? Well it is not. However if you keep a food diary of everything you consume, including drinks, you give yourself a chance to see where you are going wrong and make a change. You will be surprised if you keep a food diary what dark secrets you will unearth and how beneficial it will be.
Beeble’s worse bits
Sharing Fitness Routines
We had to dig quite deep to find anything we didn’t like but we did find a couple of weaknesses (we are being picky though – Beeble). Firstly it seems that anyone can share their workout routine with anyone else, which is fine on a social level to share ideas, but when we are talking about people’s health and their goals it’s a bit like the “well my mate says if you do 100 of these then you’ll get a flat stomach” scenario. It would be nice to see a section of workouts produced by fitness professionals only, so that you know that the exercises you are receiving are safe and will get you the results you want.
Over-obsessive Monitoring
Secondly, and no fault of Gyminee, is that it can get quite addictive constantly recording your results which can be destructive to your training long term. With your diet it is good to monitor everything you eat up until the point where you have changed your bad habits and are eating healthily. At that point I would suggest you stop monitoring it as you will become socially quite sad and your friends may disown you.
With exercise it is very important that you measure your results and progress at the right time, otherwise it can be quite depressing. After all we would all like to see permanent results from running for 40 minutes on the treadmill, however just the once won’t show anything and if you record that everyday it can demotivate and could cause you to give up. However if you keep your monitoring and result taking of body changes on a slightly less regular basis you will actually get to monitor relevant changes in your body and not the daily fluctuations that our bodies tend to go through. I would recommend that you take these measurements no more frequently than once a month and preferably every 6 weeks. From years of experience on average it takes 6 weeks to let the body adapt to all the new life routines including diet and exercise.
A Connection with a Social Network
Finally it would have been nice to see them linking as a widget with Facebook or some other community based website that is already established, like other fitness logs have. I don’t know about you but joining a community for this and a community for that starts to feel that I am not in with any group and on the outskirts of all groups in my own kind of oblivion where no one else is. By having a widget on one of these popular sites it means you could share your progress with more than just the Gyminee community and receive support from your family and friends as well.
Summary
In short we love Gyminee and it is one of those seminal moments when you know something really special has come along that will be the start of a new way of training. It is great to see a website that has covered so many angles in monitoring a healthy lifestyle. Changing your lifestyle is never just about one thing. It is about exercise, diet and social events that shape your progress and I am glad to say that Gyminee has easily covered all these areas. We recommend this site whole-heartedly and feel that it will be a great addition to all of our readers’ training needs. Visit Gyminee.com to join up today.
Let us know how you get on with it and your own feelings on the subject. Good luck and stay healthy!
