mEA of record keeping, guest post by Piers McCarney

What is this?

The heart of Gym Movement is the fact that it allows “perpetual progress”. As far as my personal experience goes (and that of anyone that I have introduced to the method), this is definitively true.

The fact is that making progress becomes so easy with Gym Movement that I have found a significant barrier not in making progress on movements, but simply keeping track of it.

Its a habit

It’s all very easy to say “get a workbook; record each workout; track progress; repeat as necessary”. And in truth, it is that simple, but it is a habit and habits require reps and steps to improve, just like anything else.

As a very lazy person by nature (the thing which drove me to seek out the most purely efficient and results oriented exercise method in the first place) I have had to attempt to improve my tracking in a variety of ways.

1. Set a time and stick to it.

We may have moved away from set schedules for our exercise sessions, but a planned point of action is still useful in some contexts. If there is something you should record but you often put off, set a significant marker that you can not pretend you didn’t notice.

For example, I always put off or forget to record my body composition measurements, made easier to procrastinate by excuses like not owning some scales. Today, as the first of a new month, I knew I was due to record it and that by skipping this designated day I was reducing my information and thus my potential to progress. The only reason I actually bothered to do it was because I had pre-planned to do so and didn’t want to succumb to my own laziness with undeniable failure.

(For the record, chest +0.3 inches, waist -1.5 inches, all other measurements equal; previous measurement approx 1 months ago.)

2. Make proximity your friend.

You are most likely to make use of the things closest to you. I missed many valueable data recording opportunities due to the fact that my only records were kept in a Google Documents spreadsheet and I didn’t always have access to a computer. As someone who has a habit of sneaking into the gym at work or testing bodyweight movements anywhere any time I get bored, this did not work. I recognised the shortfall and began keeping a simple notepad and pen at hand, primarily in my work gear. I have sacrificed an element of organisation that my spreadsheet gave me, but the increase in volume of data recorded is a great net positive.

3. Observe elements of effort even in record keeping.

If your recordkeeping is becoming a real pain, seek out the mEA (minimal effective amount) of this activity as well.

Are you keeping track of goal movement progress?

Are you keeping track of body composition?

For most people, these are the most vital elements and they are also most likely to provide you with the positive feedback to continue your movement practice and view recordkeeping as a positive stress.

Don’t fall into the trap of getting overexcited and tracking too many variables that you will never refer to. What the temperature was when you trained, what music was playing, how bright the room was or how many hours since you woke up that day may all be things that could affect your training results but if you are not going to refer back and analyse for action to take based on the information, it could all just be dead weight and better off cut.

Remember though that the key word in mEA is “effective”. If you are not collecting enough data to find and reproduce improvement, you have some work to do.

Good luck with your own experiments; I hope to have made some positive impact on your progress and see some comments with other ideas in this vein.

“Piers McCarney is an Australian shift worker and young father, who has never been accused of being athletically gifted. Practicing Gym Movement protocols since buying Gym Movement Vol. 1 around February 2010; he is entirely self-taught excepting a few DVDs and one kettlebell seminar.”