Creating an exercise log of your daily physical activities is an excellent way to plan your daily exercise routines as well as track your progress.

There are a wide variety of exercise plans available. The American Heart Association recommends at least 30 to 60 minutes a day of moderate physical activity for a healthy lifestyle. They also recommend resistance training at least two days per week and flexibility stretching on a daily basis. It is best to check with your doctor to decide on the best routine for you based on your current health, schedule and preferences.

Creating your Initial Exercise Log

Once you have decided upon an exercise routine, it is time to create your initial exercise log and begin tracking your progress. At a minimum, your first exercise log should contain columns for the date, the type of exercises performed and any notes you wish to record about the workout. This "beginner's" log can easily be kept in a notebook or journal. The main purpose of this initial log is to help you plan your workouts and get accustomed to entering data from your workouts into a log book.

Expanding your Exercise Log

After about two or three weeks of actively logging your workouts you can begin expanding your exercise log to include additional information. One addition should be a list of goals. Goals should include the date each goal is entered, the anticipated completion date for each goal and a description of each goal. Setting goals is a great way to motivate yourself and stay committed to your exercise routine for the long term.

In addition to goals, you may wish to start tracking elements unique to the exercises in your workouts. For example, if running is part of your exercise routine, you may want to begin tracking the distance ran, your half mile pace, your one mile pace, etc. With most types of exercises, you should be able to track a variety of items such as repetitions, duration, and pace. This information is valuable not only for tracking your progress, but the information can also assist you in setting obtainable fitness goals.

Advanced Exercise Logs

Over time, you may find that your initial exercise notebook is no longer adequate to keep track of your growing number of workout entries or the expanding number of exercises that make up your exercise routine. One option available for creating a more advanced exercise log is exercise log software. This software varies from small freeware programs with basic features to larger commercial software packages that have built in logging for almost every type of exercise imaginable. As an alternative to specialty software, you can also use a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel to create your advanced exercise log. The drawback is that you will have to create the exercise groups, formulas, etc. yourself.

Beyond the Exercise Log

Exercise is only one component of a healthy lifestyle. Diet is another. Similar to an exercise log that records fitness workouts, you can also create a nutrition log to track your food intake. The nutrition log can be used to set dietary goals and instead of tracking items such as exercise repetitions and duration it is used to track items such as food calories and saturated fat.

Used together, the exercise and nutrition log provide you with two excellent tools to assist you in setting and obtaining your overall fitness goals.