I've tried various methods, but a little notebook seemed to always work the best. Of course you can always transfer some data to a spreadsheet if you want a chart or something, but the only thing I really ever check is "the last time I did this exercise for this target reps what weight did I use and how many did I get?" Use that number to determine what to do today. Checking takes about 20 seconds. I now have years of weight training workouts in my little notebooks :)
I didn't really run any super advanced analytics. But when you're there 2 hours a day 6 days a week, it tends to stick in your mind when you're progressing and when you aren't.
But to give you a sense, it took me 3 years to go from 50kg to 64kg body weight (first ~8kg was in 6 months or so). 64 is my IBM limit so it's incredibly difficult to go up from that.
I could squat-lift 130kg, benchpress about 80kg, biceps curl around 25kg and so on ... it was epic.
I've since taken up boxing and in a way it's even awesomer.
I use a program called Beyond the White Board (http://beyondthewhiteboard.com/) it's $3/month. It's mainly built around CrossFit, but you could easily tailor it for your own workouts. Like a good geek, I tried to "roll my own" and use spreadsheets, but after 2-3 months I realized that the $3/month was a better usage of my resources.
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What did you use for the analytics? Or was it just spreadsheets?
I've tried various methods, but a little notebook seemed to always work the best. Of course you can always transfer some data to a spreadsheet if you want a chart or something, but the only thing I really ever check is "the last time I did this exercise for this target reps what weight did I use and how many did I get?" Use that number to determine what to do today. Checking takes about 20 seconds. I now have years of weight training workouts in my little notebooks :)
I didn't really run any super advanced analytics. But when you're there 2 hours a day 6 days a week, it tends to stick in your mind when you're progressing and when you aren't.
But to give you a sense, it took me 3 years to go from 50kg to 64kg body weight (first ~8kg was in 6 months or so). 64 is my IBM limit so it's incredibly difficult to go up from that.
I could squat-lift 130kg, benchpress about 80kg, biceps curl around 25kg and so on ... it was epic.
I've since taken up boxing and in a way it's even awesomer.
I use a program called Beyond the White Board (http://beyondthewhiteboard.com/) it's $3/month. It's mainly built around CrossFit, but you could easily tailor it for your own workouts. Like a good geek, I tried to "roll my own" and use spreadsheets, but after 2-3 months I realized that the $3/month was a better usage of my resources.