Werkit Workout Logs: Articles

Why other training logs suck

Otto Hammersmith — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:03:18 GMT

I wanted to explain why this site and these training logs exist in the first place.

Other training logs suck. Really bad, too.

Have you seen them? Have you used them?

Wait a second, let me take a step back. Not all training logs suck. The only other one I’ve used that hasn’t sucked is a simple spiral bound notebook. Actually, that was probably the first time I recognized what I was doing and started to systemize it. So you could say that my first spiral bound notebook training log really is just version 0.001 of the Werkit training logs.

Anyway, back to the point at hand. Let me take the New Rules of Lifting as an example to pick on.

It’s a grid. That’s all. It’s not actually most useful for the person doing the workouts, because it’s designed by the person who’s job it is to look at the results of the whole plan. Simple as that. No insidious reason, it was just designed by the wrong person.

Really at it’s most basic level, a workout is just a checklist. You say “I’m here to workout, I’m going to do 1, 2, 3, 4 and done.” Then you go home.

This is my checklist for my next workout.

So what makes this a good checklist? Nifty big boxes that just beg you to check them off. Yup, got that.

A description of what you’re going to do. Full sentences with subjects and verbs and everything. Not “grocery store”, but “go grocery shopping” and an actual list of things to buy. That’s what makes a checklist look at you and scream “DO ME!” Yup, got that, too. Sure there’s implicit verbs, but I’ve got essentially “squat 140 pounds 15 times and do that twice” on my next workout log. How could I not get that done?

The rest is just helpful visual cues and other aesthetics.

For example, the simple visual cue that exercises one and two on your checklist are actually an alternating set. Just one checkbox for the two. How simple is that?

In the end the real reason is to make logging my workouts as frictionless as possible. Yet, to still capture all the useful information necessary to make a grid that’s helpful for reviewing 12 weeks of hard work.

Having verification issues?

Aoife Hammersmith — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 04:19:36 GMT

Having problems? Being the kind of people we are, you know, trying to help you save a bit of time and energy, we get automated feedback every time someone looks to download our logs. Well, at least the ones from books you have to verify you have your hands on. We’ve noticed a few things, and I thought we’d address them here, in case you find you’re having the same issue(s).

People verify the book more than once.

Assuming you were approved for download of protected files, you only need to do this once. If you’ve gotten approval and find yourself needing to verify a second time for a product, simply try refreshing the page. You likely have a cached version of the page that thinks you haven’t verified yet.

People enter the wrong information for the product verification.

Please be sure to note that we’re asking for a specific page and line number. Punctuation and capitalization are not an issue, but spelling and typos are. If you’ve entered correct information and you receive an error, please let us know. The typo could have been our fault without realizing it. While we’ve checked and double checked, at least once we’ve found a mild case of dyslexia, so there could be more. We will be making small changes here and there to make things a little easier.

Now there's a newsletter

Otto Hammersmith — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:32:59 GMT

One of the things I turned on over the weekend was the Newsletter. Basically a mailing announcement list. You can sign up for the newsletter using this form.

I had been planning on using that to send out a mass mailing to everyone who had requested New Rules or New Rules for Women logs over the last few months letting them know about it. Then it came time to write that email and I realized that I had nothing to really say.

So, then, we’re not really sure what the newsletter is for. It’s definitely for site update, but probably only the major ones. There certainly won’t be lots of messages, maybe one a week.

That said, we have a new privacy policy to go with the newsletter. At least you’ll know what we intend to do with your email address. The gist, nothing except the newsletter and site administrative, like resetting your password.

Six months and just getting started

Otto Hammersmith — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:43:15 GMT

Sunday marks six months from when we first launched werkit.com. We’ve added some new forms, tweaked things here and there but haven’t really added any real new features. Well, we’re about to start.

The first is probably the most basic. Well… um, you’re reading it right now. This blog hopefully will be a helpful addition. It will be a source of news, information and even some articles on how we’re using the forms ourselves. Naturally, there’s an RSS feed so it’s easy to keep up with the changes.

We won’t say much about what we’re planning on now, but this is the first place we’ll start to reveal what’s up our sleeves.

Anyway, some stuff about the the last six months.

Lots of pages served up, coming up on 15k. Close to 3500 folks have come to the site. Probably the most surprising statistic to us is the 700+ downloads of the just the blank weightlifting log form.

To wrap up, if you have any suggestions or thoughts on what you’d like to see on werkit.com use the feedback form and we’ll see what we can do.