While some people love the high tech revolution and use their phones or PDAs for everything, including fitness.   Others want to slow it down a little and use good old fashioned paper and a pen.  After all, let’s face it, when you don’t have access to a computer that shouldn’t bring your life to an end.  That’s where a printable exercise log comes in so handy.

You can easily fold it up and put it in your pocket or a purse.  It’s quick to jot down the  details of a workout and you can decide how much information to include.  Later, when you get back home, or even once a month, it’s easy to transfer the details into an online exercise log.  Seems easy, doesn’t.

The hardest part might be just starting.  But once you get your groove on, this quick and easy printable exercise log will be sure to give you the motivation you need to keep on keeping on (I think those lyrics come from a song).

Anyhoo, I hope you like it.  Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Would you believe that there are a lot of people that come to my site looking for printable logs.  One in particular is a printable food diary to track meals (that’s a link I found to a squidoo lens), calories, etc.  There are a bunch of great reasons to track what you eat and they might not all be what you think.

Just to give you an idea, here’s a list of reasons to keep a food diary:

• Cancer, heart disease and diabetes are largely believed to be preventable and diet choices alone can significantly reduce your risk of getting them.
• While iron, zinc, protein and B vitamins are good nutrients that come from eating meat, saturated fat and cholesterol are bad.
• Omega 3 fatty acids are considered to be very healthy and are found in fish
• Plant based foods contain natural antioxidants and improve your health

So, how can you be sure that you’re getting just the right amount of meat, but not too much, and that you’re getting a healthy variety of nutrients?  The answer is that you need to keep track of what you eat.  That lens that I put in above gives this printable food diary PDF that you can download and print out.

There are some additional links in the PDF to help you make your food log accurate, like links to recipe sites and one site that will tell you how many calories and fat are in McDonald’s french fries (that’s a real gem of a site too).

There’s a link to the site where you can comment on the log and make suggestions.

To your health!

A lot of people exercise, but not everyone uses an exercise log.  Why would it be important to use an exercise log?  There’s a great article on scribd about the three main benefits you get when you use an exercise log as part of your workout program.  I wanted to summarize them here too.

The first benefit is Consistency.  Consistency in when you exercise and how much you exercise affects both your energy level while exercising and your body’s ability to get maximum benefit.  When you log each workout, you can more easily stay consistent with your physical activity.

Second is motivation.  There are few things more motivating to see that you’ve just accomplished something that you might not have thought you could do.  That’s how a lot of people feel when they see the number of miles or hours of exercise accumulate in their exercise log.  Once you’ve seen how far you’ve come, you’ll want to keep it going.

Finally, achievement.  If you haven’t already learned that setting a goal for your personal fitness is the most sure way to make progress, then hopefully you’ll change that today.  In fact, someone that sets a specific goal, whether to train for an event or lose a certain number of pounds, has a very significantly increased chance of reaching that goal.  An exercise log is a fantastic way to record your progress and stay on track.

That’s it.  Go have a read (remember, it’s this article about exercise log)  and leave a comment here on my blog to tell me what you think.

I know that I’ve posted about maintainfit.com in the past.  Maintain Fit is simply the best and easiest to use Exercise Log on the internet (well, that’s my opinion anyway).  Now it’s even better and simpler to use.

In the last few weeks I’ve uploaded an entirely new version that really simplifies how you interact with the log and includes some cool new features.  The biggest new feature is  Google Maps integration to let you calculate the distance of your route right on the page where you add it to your exercise log.

If you’re looking for an exercise log to keep you motivated and on track with your health and fitness goals, go sign up for a free account.  For those of you that already have accounts, please tell me what you think of the new features and layout by leaving me some comments.

I just did a quick write up on my blog about a new running shoe by Newton.  I’d seen their site before, but this time I actually looked at their stuff and they have a great video about both running form and their shoes.  What was so interesting to me is that they have a unique take on running form.  Rather than a traditional heel strike, they suggest landing on the ball of your foot.  I put the video and a quick write up on my website here: Newton Running Shoes.

If you’ve ever run in Newton’s or agree with their comments on form, take a minute and leave a comment.