Workout Organization

Happy Hump Day everyone! I had another long day today but I'm trying to squeeze in a quick post before bed.

After my sister's post yesterday about how she wanted to makea workout binder, I got to thinking about my organization as far as fitness is concerned. I definitely never used to be organized, I just kind of went
to the gym and did what I felt like and then came home. I think that's 100 percent fine too, but I find (for me) if I have some plan in action before I will usually push myself more even if I am tempted to be lazy.

Right now I have a couple of different organizational systems going on. The first is that I always plan my workouts in my plan book at the beginning of the week. That helps me prioritize getting in a workout even when I may have a lot going on during a week. If something is in my schedule I am more likely to stick to it.

The second thing that I just started doing is for my elliptical work outs. I had scrap pieces of paper everywhere that had my elliptical "plans" on them and I could never find one when I actually wanted to go to the gym. So I decided to type up my elliptical workouts and put them
on a ring:

Then, I can just grab one of them and stick it in my gym bag. This gives me a lot of flexibility and it's so easy to add on new work outs when I get bored of the old ones. Having a workout on the elliptical has made a huge difference for me as far as enjoyment of the elliptical. It keeps things way more interesting and ensures I will be challenged during my workout. The process of making one took about 4 minutes (I had all the workouts typed for the blog anyways) and it
saves me a ton of searching time before the gym.

I don't tend to keep too close track of my cardio workouts, but when I started getting serious about strength training a few weeks ago I decided I needed to write down what I was doing for a couple of
reasons. The first is that I want to make sure I am balancing my different muscle groups. In my lifting class I have an instructor telling me what to do, but I am on my own on Friday or Saturday when I
do my third lift so I need to know what muscles I have targeted that week so far and how much so I can organize a good work out on Saturday. If I get my quads really strong but never work my hamstrings I will be off balance, which can cause problems in my knees and let's be honest- knees are not something I need any additional problems with! I also
record my strength training because I want to make sure I am always progressing with weights and it's hard to do that if I don't write down what weights I was using the previous time. Enter: The little pink notebook.

Yup, I totally carry this baby around with me at the gym. I write down all the machines I use, what exercises I do, how many sets, how many repetitions and what the weight is. I also figure this will help when I am transitioning into lifting 3 times a week by myself at the end of February. Plus it's nice to see how much heavier my weights are getting :)

Do you organize your workouts at all? It all seems a little "strict" to me, but yet it's very easy and does push me to do new things.