Reactive Training Systems will always strive to bring you the most advanced training tools that we can.  One such tool is a new addition to the website – the Training Log.  Lots of people log their workouts.  If you’ve been around RTS for a while, you know that we’ve had the forum log for a few years now.  This tool will be different, and in true RTS style, much more advanced.
  When using the online training log, a user will input their training information and submit it to the website (directions here).  We do the rest.
  All of the calculations are made for you.  The calculations are similar to the excel sheet that comes with the RTS Manual, but with key differences.
       1) The website will easily adapt to your own custom template.  No more changing the way you input the data or trying to reprogram excel.
       2) The calculations themselves are updated to add some relevant info that was missing from earlier versions
       3) There are analysis tools built into the website that allow you to analyze your training with ease.  This gives you more time for… whatever you want to spend  it on.

And a big perk of the new log (not necessarily a difference from the old one) is that it will be offered for free on the RTS website!
So I’m guessing that by now it’s clear that the new training log tool will be much better than the old one.  But why log training at all?
The whole point for logging training – the whole point of RTS – is customized, adaptable training that’s designed to suit your needs, not necessarily the needs of someone else.  Analysis of the training log is one easy way to customize your training that can yield big effects over the long term.
“Going by feel” is overrated and, frankly, an over-simplified, inefficient approach.  Study after study has shown that subjective feelings are usually skewed, often quite skewed, from reality.  People who have done training log analysis in the past can likely attest to this.  If you had to miss a workout for this or that reason, how much training did you really miss?  If you modify your training on the fly (as most people do from time to time), how do you know the specifics of the modification?
These questions highlight the importance of training log analysis.  I will write material on training log analysis, but as with nearly all things, I must first lay some groundwork.
Let’s talk about some of the basic measurements and what they mean.
Sets
This is pretty easy.  This is the total number of sets you recorded in a given time.  This is one of many measurements of volume.

Avg %
This is the average percent of 1RM that you were training at.  Numbers that are generally “high” or “low” here depend on how you record your training.  For example, I record only weights that are roughly within 10% of my top set.  If you do the same, then under 74% is generally low intensity.  Greater than 78% is generally high intensity.  This will vary for the individual and the recording style.  The best thing to do is to watch the numbers and determine what is “high”, “medium”, and “low” to you.  In the future, we will add analysis tools to help you determine this information.

Tonnage
This is the total amount of weight you lifted over the specified period of time (pounds or kilos).  For example, if you lift 500 pounds 10 times, that would be 5000 pounds of volume.  This is the generally accepted measuring stick for “total volume”.  It is heavily influenced by the total number of reps you do, but it is also obviously dependant on the load.  Rating tonnages as “low”, “medium”, or “high” is difficult as it depends on the lifter, on the lifts being trained, and how the lifts are recorded.  Just make sure you are doing apples-to-apples comparisons (meaning that you take exercise changes into account) and watch for patterns.

NL
This is the total number of repetitions you performed during the specified period of time.  This is an indication of total volume of work that does not rely on barbell load, and thus is more comparable when the exercises have changed.

NL in the various intensity zones
This group of fields breaks “NL” up into their various intensity zones.  Using this, you can see the distribution of volume across the intensity zones.  You would be able to tell very quickly which intensity zone you perform most of your work.  This is very helpful in the planning process because you can easily determine, for example, how long has it been since you have done a deload week?  How long has it been since you trained at 95%?  If your average intensity is “medium”, does that come from lots of medium intensity work, or from a mix of low and high intensity work?  This field has numerous applications to the planning process.

Stress Integer
This one is really interesting.  If you are familiar with RTS, you know that I am more interested in Stress than I am volume.  For more info on this, see the RTS Manual.  Stress varies with each rep depending on the intensity, so this measurement was designed to account (somewhat) for that.  In this sense, you could roughly compare two workouts to see which one caused more “stress” – which will require more recovery time.  This metric is still a work in progress, but can still be extremely helpful.  I suggest that this measurement be used to compare workouts to further your understanding about what is stressful in training.

There are a few other measurements that are recorded in the training log, but they tend to be self-explanatory. 

A little more on Analysis…
I don’t suggest using a training log for week-to-week adjustments.  Instead use it to help with whole-cycle analysis and developing your next training cycle.  If you’re keeping notes on how you’re feeling (or your functional states, if you are able), a comparison of your training stress vs. your results can reveal important information about how you adapt to training.  For example, if you have a week with an unusually low volume, then experience a negative response in subsequent weeks, then you may be able to make an assumption about how to adjust training in the future.  That said, however, don’t be too quick to assume a result is due to the training immediately preceding it.  A perfect example of this is Concentrated Loading.  Concentrated loading, in layman’s terms, is intentional overtraining (which involves walking a very fine line).  If you do 3 weeks of concentrated loading, you will probably be weaker immediately afterwards.  But after 3 more weeks of low volume, high intensity training, you’ll likely see large improvements.  When analyzing this type of training, you have to realize that the concentrated loading part takes longer to show its training effect – and it is timed in such a way to combine with the training effect of the lower volume, higher intensity training.
“So if my results could be from recent training or from training far in the past, how do I know which one?” 
If you keep notes on your training log that detail how you feel in general terms and you’re on the lookout for trends, then I don’t think you’ll have much trouble seeing them.  The log itself won’t provide you with magical answers for how you should program your training anyway, but most of us aren’t looking for magic.  It’s raw, useful, information that gives you details on how YOU react to training.  Couple this information with knowledge of how to set up your training cycle and you have the tools to make good decisions.  This question also highlights the importance of doing whole-cycle analysis, not just individual training weeks.  Whole-cycle analysis will do a lot to avoid this potential problem.

Training Log Analysis can sometimes be hard, but it’s benefits vastly outweigh the costs.  Couple that with the fact that RTS is always improving our analysis tools and I think you’ll find that it’s not as hard as you initially thought and it’s very, very useful!

Click here for directions on how to enter your training log data!