To be honest, tracking my sets and repetitions didn’t happen early for me, I was in my 30s when I started tracking how much weight I use on each exercise.

I had a rough idea of how much weight I could lift in bicep curls and in bench presses with dumbbells but I found quite quickly that I wasn’t pushing as much as I could’ve in many cases, I was using the exact same weight for too long! I could’ve moved on to +5lbs on a given week but didn’t and it wasn’t until I started keeping track of my workouts that I knew exactly what weight I had used the previous week.

I now have a a clear idea of where I’m making progress and where I’m plateauing to either fix my form or find new exercises that push certain muscles. For instance, on tricep pulldowns it’s been really challenging to move up from 90lbs and I’ll definitely adjust my form and start recording my sets with my phone to find out what’s going on. That’s just one simple example of how tracking your sets can help in the long run.

Happy lifting everyone, hope this helped you! I’ll keep writing detailed notes about my lifting journey.