Kenneth Gardner

If you are serious about your weight training programme then it's essential that you keep an honest and detailed training diary to monitor your workouts.

Keeping a training diary will help to increase your awareness of what you are doing in your weight training programme. Taking accurate notes about your training and recording the results will help you to determine which training techniques work best on your unique body. Ultimately, you will only begin to see results as a function of how quickly and thoroughly you learn precisely which training and nutritional practices work best for you.

When updating your training diary, it's vitally important to look back at your recorded notes from time to time. This will provide a clear indication of which training routines, exercises, nutritional variables and techniques are working best for you. Looking back at your older records can also be quite inspirational, allowing you to graphically note your progression in training poundage and intensity levels. You may not notice much progress from a few days or a few weeks workout, but over a period of several months you will be able to see that you have made significant strides. When you see results this great, your enthusiasm for each workout will be greatly increased.

When you begin your weight training programme, you should record the date of each workout, the exercises performed, the weights used in each movement and the sets and reps performed. When recording your workouts, try adapting to a type of weight training shorthand that looks like this:

Bench Press: 125 x 8 (3)

Dumb-bell Incline Press 60 x 9 (4)

In the foregoing examples, you are expected to have done three sets of bench presses using 125lbs weights, at eight reps per set. In the dumb-bell incline press, you are expected to do four sets using 60lbs, at nine reps per set.

Here is a list of upper body exercises for you to do.

Incline bench press (chest exercise)

Start on your back on an incline bench.

Hold a weighed barbell directly above your shoulders with both arms straight and feet flat on the floor.

Inhale as you lower the bar to touch your chest.

Exhale as you press the weight back up to the starting position.

Universal lats pulldown (back exercise)

Grasp bar with a pronated grip and your hands wider than shoulde"

Assume a seated position with your arms straight.

Inhale and pull the bar down to your upper chest.

Exhale as you slowly allow the bar to return to the starting position.

Barbell side curls (biceps exercise)

Place a moderately weighted barbell on the floor.

Bend and take a shoulder width undergrip on the bar.

Stand erect and keep arms at sides with weight resting across your upper thighs.

Set feet a comfortable distance apart.

Push elbows towards back and slowly bend arms and slide barbell up and down your abdomen.

Repeat movement.

Kenneth Gardner is an exercise physiologist at the G. C. Foster College of Physical Education: email: yourhealth@gleanerjm.com.