Mens Beginner Workout

With any training program, it’s important to give time for serious self-evaluation; in short, to figure out how things have worked out (or not worked out) for you on the whole. Self-evaluation may be one of the most commonly overlooked aspects of any nutrition and exercise program – but at the same time, it’s one of the most critical for long-term success. For some, evaluating progress is a simple, black-and-white yes or no: “either I accomplished everything I set out to do or I didn’t.” For others, it amounts to nothing more than a look-and-feel type of self-check. Is one a better means of evaluating your progress than the other? Not necessarily. Can both be used to help evaluate your progress? To an extent. Self-evaluation, it seems, can be a little tricky.

The truth is, there are a number of ways to figure out how successful you are at making the program work for you, and perhaps the best way to determine your success and identify problem areas is to use both of the aforementioned methods: in combining the “black-and-white” and “look-and-feel” concepts, you’re getting the best of both worlds, and a clearer picture with regard to your overall success (or lack thereof).

Let’s start with the black-and-white: this is where your diet and exercise journal comes into play. Skim over a month’s worth of entries; what stands out as positive? What goals were you able to check off? How quickly were you able to check-off those goals? Does anything stand out as detrimental to them? If you’ve been writing everything down, it shouldn’t be too difficult to identify problem areas, as well as the places where you’ve excelled.

If that doesn’t suit you, try plotting out the various aspects of your nutrition and exercise plan. For example, take a look at how your bench press has improved over the course of the last few months. Plot out how much weight you’ve added and when, and include any other info you might have jotted down (your one rep max, etc.). Now, connect the dots; if the lines are always on an incline, good for you. If they’ve dipped, however, that could be a pretty good indicator that your intensity wasn’t where it should have been, or some other factor (e.g., you were overtraining, not getting enough sleep, adequate nutrition, etc.).

On the flip side, there’s the look-and-feel method: can you still pinch that inch? How’s your outlook on life been lately – positive or negative? Have you been sleeping well? There are a number of general factors that you should also be keeping track of that, generally speaking, say a lot about your stress levels, and how they might be affecting the program as well.

You see, both of these methods are trying to get at the bigger picture – how all the pieces fit together. That’s self-evaluation in a nutshell – being able to see how everything fits together, finding the places where they don’t fit so well, and learning how to smooth those places out. Keep it in mind as you progress throughout the coming weeks and months.