How To Successfully Monitor Results
We all love a good result.
Imagine sitting an exam… But not getting a grade at the end.
Or competing in the Olympics… but with no scoring, medals or podiums.
Results are a measure of our success.
But…
How we monitor our results can seriously impact our success in managing our Health & Fitness!
Let’s dig in.
Monitoring The Right Results
I’ll often have people reach out to me because they feel that they’re not seeing results…
The first question I ask is:
“What makes you think that you’re not getting any results?”
I may get an answer like: “I just don’t FEEL like I am”
Which means that the person isn’t really using any form of objective monitoring for their results.
They’re judging their success based off of how they FEEL.
The problem is that often how we FEEL, isn’t going to reflect what’s actually happening.
A person could objectively be getting great results (losing body fat, gaining muscle, feeling more energised etc).
But because they don’t FEEL like they are making progress… their reality becomes different to what’s happening.
They may start to make the wrong decisions to speed up their results, or worse, they may quit because they start to feel so demotivated that nothing is working.
So our first key point is that:
It’s essential to have some form of monitoring when it comes to our progress / results. How we FEEL is not always an accurate measure.
Now we recognise that we need to monitor our results in some fashion…
We need to ensure we’re using the RIGHT measure of our progress.
I like to compare measuring our health and fitness to measuring our intelligence.
Imagine going to a school, where 1000 kids were all going to be ranked in order of their intelligence.
But the only subject they tested the kids on was Maths.
I don’t think that would be a very accurate way to assess the intelligence of people.
Some kids would be better at English, Science, Athletics or possess better Social / emotional intelligence.
And yet…
When it comes to our Health and Fitness, many people only look to SCALE WEIGHT as the measure of a healthy person.
This is like only measuring intelligence with a Maths test.
To get a more accurate picture of our health and fitness we need to utilise other forms of measurement.
Much like the fact that there are 100’s of subjects we can be tested on at school… there are 100’s of ways we could assess a persons health and fitness.
It’s not practical to use every single measure we could possibly use.
So I wanted to share with you a few of what I’ve found to give the best overall picture of a persons progress.
Goal: Physique Goals
Progress photos
Inches
Scale Weight (sparingly, as this isn’t an accurate measure of somebody’s amount of bodyfat)
There are also methods to directly measure a persons body fat, but the more easily accessible ones such as body fat scales can be inaccurate… and the very accurate ones rely on more specialised equipment.
Goal: Improving Overall Health
Resting Heart Rate / HRV
Blood Pressure
Blood profile (medically monitored)
If you are really invested in optimising your health, it may be worthwhile to have some semi-regular blood profiling. This may sound like a lot of effort, but when it comes to being in the best possible health, it’s a worthwhile investment.
Goal: Performance
Strength Tests (bench press, squats, deadlift, push ups, grip etc)
Endurance Tests (5km run, mile time, cycling test, rowing tests)
Power (broad jump, standing jump, throw)
Mobility (Range of motion tests)
The above list is by no means exhaustive, but it is comprehensive.
If we go back to the intelligence analogy.
It would be far too time consuming to test kids on absolutely every subject matter.
But also silly to measure them based on 1.
My suggestion is to choose anywhere from 3-6 ways to monitor your progress that are relevant to your goal.
By having multiple forms of measurement, we can build a clearer picture of exactly what’s going on.
If one measurement doesn’t make sense, we can compare it to the other measurements we have so we can be confident that we’re going in the right direction.
In The Right Way
Now we know what measurements we are using to monitor our progress.
We need to make sure we’re taking these measurements the right way.
There are 2 ways we need to ensure we are taking our results:
1. At the right times.
2. At regular intervals.
At the right times
When it comes to testing our results…
We want to make sure that as many variables as possible, are the same.
For example…
If my goal was to improve the way that I look.
And I decided I was going to use progress photo’s as one of my monitoring tools.
I could get a very different result taking a photo at 7am on Wednesday morning vs 9pm on Friday night.
The results will likely look very different after a full day of eating and drinking.
The time of day will impact a lot of other measurements too.
Without giving examples of every type of measurement.
When you test….
Try your best to replicate the conditions that you're testing in exactly.
At regular intervals
The length of time between testing is also worth considering.
We can check our results:
Annually. Quarterly. Monthly. Weekly. Daily.
Depending on the result that is being monitored, all of those intervals could be utilised.
Using a degree of common sense here is important.
It wouldn’t be a good idea to check progress photos every day as that really isn’t much time to see a visible difference in physique.
But potentially checking your results at intervals that are too far apart could cause you to lose interest or not have any awareness of how things are going.
I find the best practice is very dependent on a persons goal and their personality.
As long as you are able to find the balance between managing your levels of motivation and seeing the data in “real-time” so you are able to make adjustments as necessary based on your progress.
The key principle is to:
Increase the reliability and accuracy of our results as best as possible by paying attention to when we measure and how frequently we do it.
In Summary
Monitoring our results is a very important part of our health and fitness.
To do it successfully we need to ensure that we are:
Firstly monitoring our results in the first place!
Secondly, that we are monitoring our results in the right way.
This involves monitoring more than just what we weight. Choosing 3-6 relevant measures of our progress to give us a full picture of our results.
And finally, Choosing to take these measurements at the right time and with the right frequency… In an effort to make the results as accurate as possible whilst balancing our motivation and real-time pulse of how things are going.
It may take some refinement over time…
But if you can get this aspect of your health and fitness right, it will lead to the best possible results and ultimately health and fitness success.
Yours in coaching,
Harry