When putting together your fitness plan, it’s truly important to understand the value of monitoring your progress all throughout the process and, at the same time, to discover the suitable tools for that purpose.
Tracking your fitness progress is without a doubt a mandatory step. This way, by periodically checking your level, you’ll be able to know where you stand in comparison to day one and how much has remained before reaching your health goals. Once you’ll notice your physical evolution, you’ll most surely become more confident in your abilities and get that motivation boost to hang on until you achieve your objective.
Determining your current fitness level can be accomplished with the aid of various monitoring tools. Each of these tools can serve distinctive purposes and can help you improve specific health-related aspects. You just gotta know what exactly is it that you want to periodically track and which is the most suitable method to do that.
Here are five fitness tracking tools you can effectively put to use:
Trendy Fitness Trackers
Technology has known tremendous advancements in the health department, and fitness trackers represent an indisputable proof. Wearable technology, whether wrist bands, smart watches or clip-ons, can keep track of your health altogether, but also of specific activities and sports, such as running, cycling or swimming.
Fitness gadgets are suitable for various purposes, in the sense that they can track your steps, heart rate or perhaps your sleep. Through the constant feedback they provide, they can help you understand your behavior and what you need to improve to better your health. Just bear in mind that most trackers are pretty costly in comparison to other monitoring tools.
Easy to Use Fitness Apps
These apps can be truly helpful if you’re determined to monitor your progress, simply because they provide insight into every possible health-related aspect. Moreover, they make fitness tracking much easier in comparison to a fitness tracker which you have to carry with you every time and remember to charge it. With a fitness app is much simpler, since all you need is your smart phone which you have it on you all the time anyway.
With fitness apps you can, first of all, quantify your daily activity. An activity tracker app can track the steps you take, the flights of stairs climbed, the distance walked or ran, the amount of calories burned and how much time you spent physically active. There are also diet and nutrition apps designed to monitor your food habits and help you stay on track by calculating calories for each meal. In addition to that, you can find apps which allow you to log and track your workouts in an efficient manner.
Use a Tape Measure
This is the right tool to use if you want to focus on the inches lost since you began exercising. Use a classic tape measure, start taking measurements of multiple parts of your body, such as the chest, waist, thighs, hips, neck and shoulders and then write it all down.
In order to obtain optimal results make sure you take body measures early in the morning, before breakfast and before your exercise routine. Also don’t forget to measure the exact same same place on your body every time, so that the results will be as accurate as possible.
Keep a Fitness Journal
If you like to keep things on paper, a journal is the right solution to log your progress. You can use a normal journal or can buy one that is customized specifically for your fitness needs. The latter may be easier to use, since it comes designed with individual sheets to record your daily workouts and activities, food and water intake, body measurements or other useful stats.
If you feel that the handwritten journal is somehow obsolete, you can opt for an online journal to keep track of your evolution. These will allow you to log pretty much everything related to fitness, from weight training to blood pressure and glucose measurements.
The Classic Scale
This is a method that seems everlasting, regardless of the technological evolution recorded throughout the years. If your main target is to lose weight, a bathroom scale is a great indicator of how you’re coming along. You can go for a standard scale or opt for a modern, digital one that can provide additional information besides your weight, like body composition or heart rate.
If you do decide to use the scale to monitor your weight, it’s advisable to do it once a week at best. This shouldn’t become a daily habit, because it could easily turn into a source of frustration once you notice you’re not losing pounds from one day to the next. Dependent on several factors, our body weight can fluctuate significantly during a day and therefore it would be more relevant to resort to a weekly weighing.
All in all, fitness tracking is one of the keys to improving your overall state of health. Equally important is to find the right tools to effectively monitor your progress and know how you can better yourself both physically and mentally.
Which tools do you use to track your fitness progress? Let us know in the comments below.
