Tracking your progress is one of the most important parts of gaining weight and building muscle mass. Recently I passed the 60kg threshold (which is an increase of 3-4kg in just over a month!) and seeing that progress is one heck of a motivator plus a validation that I must sort of know what I’m doing (phew). But I am against over analyzing and doing any tracking that takes away from the overall experience of strength building.
I see people who track the sizes of their muscles, the exact reps for every set, and every other tiny metric that they can think of. I realize that some people treat this process as a science experiment and want to be very particular about their progress. For an ectomorph just getting started though I feel tracking your weight gain with such detail and obsessiveness is just unnecessary.
And that’s why I’m such a fan of Skinnyr.com, a free web application that allows you to easily track how much you weigh, while also calculating your BMI so you can see when you pass the “underweight” threshold. Plus, if you need some accountability to form the strength training habit they also allow you embed a graph of your progress onto any website. You can see mine on my About page.
With that in mind here are a few points you need to remember:
- Your weight is the most important metric to track and the only one I’d 100% recommend thinking about.
- Don’t overcomplicate tracking. Keep it simple.
- Use Skinnyr to simplify tracking and consider starting a blog for accountability-purposes and embed the graph so people can monitor your progress.
Now go get started…
