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com and we will work with you to provide the information or service you seek through an alternate communication method that is accessible for you consistent with applicable law for example, through telephone support. Tracking progress of fat loss and muscle gain can be a bit of a whirlwind.

Enlist the help of these trainer-approved tools for tracking your strength training progress. If strength training is already a part of your fitness regimen, good for you! This is mainly because it utilizes your own bodyweight as a resistance tool to strengthen your muscles and increases your ability to produce force.

Boost your metabolism and burn calories with strength training workouts from Aaptiv. Adams, Ph. You can do this by tracking your progress. Logging a workout journal is one of the simplest and most effective ways to track the amount of weight you lifted in previous workouts.

So if we continually do the same weights and the same exercises, the body will no longer elicit a response to change. A workout journal, however, can help you switch up your strength training programs. This will keep your muscles in a constant state of being challenged.

You can do this in your workout journal. We are Are you on track to achieving your fitness goals? Track Track your fitness Fitstream App Track your fitness progress and see the difference for yourself with our free app What's your end goal?

Lose Weight Build Muscle Tone Up Build Strength Build Stamina Resources Resources Health and fitness articles, exercises and tools. Articles A range of articles targeted at your level to help you progress. Exercises Select exercises that are relevant to your end goal. Fitness Tools Manage, measure and track your fitness with Fitstream tools and calculators.

Shop Fitstream Rings 10kg Weighted Vest. Search Fitness Equipment Exercises Articles Blog. How to Build Muscle with Fitstream Track your progress, stay motivated and transform your body. View the live stream Its free.

A Simple Guide to Build More Muscle. You're off to a good start and you've got a goal - to build more muscle. Firstly, let's cover off the hard and fast rules of muscle building to get rid of common misconceptions and set expectations early; Muscle Building Facts and Rules Muscle fibre quantity, make-up and shape is determined by genetics.

You can't change this. Muscle size and strength is up to you. Building muscle ultimately comes down to two things; the food you eat and your physical activity otherwise known as diet and exercise. Take in more calories that you use and you'll get bigger.

Take in fewer calories than you use and you'll get smaller. Eat at your maintenance level of calories and you'll stay the same.

Nutrition plays a crucial role in building muscle. Protein is essential for muscle growth, and you'll need to eat more protein than your body breaks down.

This is called a positive protein balance. You'll also need to eat more calories than you burn, as building muscle requires energy. It's important to track your macro and micronutrient intake to ensure you're meeting your nutritional needs and fueling your workouts effectively.

In addition to protein and calorie intake, carbohydrates are also important for muscle gain. Carbs provide energy for workouts and help replenish glycogen stores in muscles. It's recommended to consume complex carbohydrates, such as whole grains and vegetables, rather than simple sugars.

Tracking progress is also crucial for muscle gain. This can be done through measuring body composition, such as body fat percentage and muscle mass, as well as tracking strength gains in exercises. It's important to set realistic goals and track progress regularly to make adjustments to your nutrition and workout routine as needed.

Tracking your workouts is one of the most crucial aspects of measuring muscle gain. You'll need to track your sets, reps, and weight lifted to ensure you're progressing.

You can track your workouts by recording the exercises you perform, the weight lifted, and the sets and reps completed. By documenting your progress, you'll stay motivated and ensure that you're pushing yourself to reach your goals. Additionally, tracking your workouts can also help you identify any patterns or trends in your performance.

For example, you may notice that you consistently struggle with a certain exercise or muscle group. This information can help you adjust your workout routine to target those areas and improve your overall fitness.

Furthermore, tracking your workouts can also help you avoid injury by ensuring that you're not overworking certain muscles or neglecting others. Overall, tracking your workouts is a simple yet effective way to improve your fitness and achieve your goals.

Technology has made it easier than ever to track muscle gain progress. There are several apps available that can help you track your workouts, nutrition, and progress. Some apps even allow you to scan barcodes, making it easy to track your food intake.

Wearable fitness devices such as Fitbit and Apple Watch can also track your workouts, calories burned, and even your sleep, allowing you to get a more comprehensive view of your progress.

In addition to apps and wearable devices, there are also online communities and forums dedicated to tracking muscle gain progress. These communities allow you to connect with others who are also on a fitness journey, share tips and advice, and track your progress together.

Some popular online communities include Bodybuilding. com and MyFitnessPal. By joining these communities, you can stay motivated and accountable, and get the support you need to reach your fitness goals.

There are several mistakes to avoid when measuring muscle gain progress. The most common mistake is not tracking your progress at all. If you're serious about building muscle, then you need to track your progress to ensure you're making gains.

Another common mistake is not measuring body composition. You need to track your body composition to know if you're losing fat and gaining muscle. Finally, not tracking your nutrition is another significant mistake. You need to ensure you're eating enough protein and calories to fuel your workouts and support muscle growth.

One additional mistake to avoid when measuring muscle gain progress is not taking into account your sleep and recovery.

Sleep is crucial for muscle growth and repair, and not getting enough sleep can hinder your progress. Additionally, not allowing your muscles enough time to recover between workouts can also impede your progress. It's important to prioritize rest and recovery to ensure you're giving your muscles the time they need to grow and repair.

Suggestions include: Train just two or three times per week to give your muscles time to recover. Choose compound exercises that work multiple major muscle groups, for example, the squat and bench press. Make your workouts short and intense rather than long and leisurely. These claims are not scientifically proven.

Seek professional advice. A gym instructor, personal trainer, exercise physiologist or physiotherapist will help make sure you are doing each exercise correctly.

Good advice will increase your gains and reduce your risk of injury. Lifestyle adjustments for weight gain Suggestions include: Be prepared to eat when you are not hungry. Use a timer to remind yourself to eat every two hours.

Try to make your additional eating sessions as appealing as possible. For example, stock the fridge and cupboard with snack foods you love. Eat small serves of protein foods before and after each resistance training session to help promote muscle growth.

Accept that an increase in food intake may cause bloating or gas. Be prepared to gain some fat as well. Track your weight gain progress Tracking your progress helps to boost motivation. Suggestions include: Keep a diary to monitor your kilojoule intake and training schedule.

Be consistent. Weight gain requires that you increase your daily food intake every day. It may help to write up meal plans. Make sure your goals are realistic. For example, an increase of a few kilos may take a year to achieve.

See your doctor regularly to assess your progress. Where to get help Your doctor Dietitians Association of Australia Tel. See your doctor before starting any weight-gain program. To gain weight, you must eat more and stimulate muscle growth.

Increasing Muscle Mass, , Australian Institute of Sport External Link. Increasing muscle mass External Link , Sports Dietitians Australia. Gaining Weight, The HealthCentral Network External Link , Inc, USA. Healthy weight gain, , American Dietetic Association. External Link. Give feedback about this page.

All body fat measurements should be taken in order to identify trends, not to provide hard and fast numbers. There is little point in reaching a target body fat percentage if it's not comfortable or doesn't help you with achieving your goals. With body fat measurements common sense should prevail.

It may seem odd that I have decided to combine these but looking at my notes I've noticed a lot of similarities in the different ways of tracking progress whilst trying to achieve either of these goals.

They can provide motivation in giving your something to strive for and can be simply as useful as reminding you of exactly what you were capable of last week, and what you should aim for this week.

Keeping an actual journal is slightly different in my opinion. This requires some sort of organization as you must make sure that dates run into each other and that the information is presented clearly. The Bodybuilding. com forums allow you the opportunity to start your own training log, along with pictures, in order to help you track your progress, give you a permanent base for keeping your results and getting advice and encouragements off of other athletes.

This also allows you to your track your progress qualitatively. By this I mean times or weights lifted don't matter. Instead you can constantly compare yourself to your partner knowing you are both training under the same conditions.

Many of the principles described previously still apply, although these methods of tracking progress can use in conjunction with them. These tests offer the opportunity to get standardized results for those looking to track their cardio-vascular performance.

They are not a substitute for actual training and should only be performed occasionally. You must remember that change does not happen overnight. For some, a change in bodyweight or fat levels may only be distinguishable on the actual scales every 2 weeks or so, in which case they may wish to reformulate their workout and diet, or may be happy with slow and steady progress.

Everyone is different. Measurements and pictures need only be taken every month or so in my opinion. This is simply because a longer time span is required to notice any discernable difference in these regards. In fact, taking either of these too close together and expecting results can often lead to disappointment and de-motivation.

This means that in practice a recovery period is required in order to sufficiently recuperate from the maximum effort test. This in itself will interfere with a regular training regime. Add to that the fact that maximum exertion testing also reduces the amount of time available for actual training and the fact that going to your maximum regularly is hard on the body.

All of this means, to me, that such testing should be used once a month, if not less. Obviously this does not take into account actual competition, where athletes may be required to push their body to the limits week in week out for several weeks.

This is not only in your methodology, but also the time of day for example, bodyweight and appearance can fluctuate depending on the time of the day they are measured and day of the week for example, your bench press may be significantly weaker if tested after an arm day rather than a leg day.

The best way of keeping track of workouts and diet is by simply writing it all down. I keep both a notebook log at the gym and a computer log at home on the PC. On weekends I log the results of my weights sessions into the computer which allows me time to look over previous weeks and compare my progress.

By keeping all of the information in one place I can easily track my progress and identify plateaus, strengths and weaknesses. When it comes to food, this is pretty easy. I use a nutrient database in order to keep track of my basic diet in order calculate calories to ensure I am getting enough protein etc.

Once I have a diet that suits me I no longer have to calculate anything- just eat, train and rest! If I find I need to up my calorific intake I can simply increase my portion size slightly or add an extra meal. However, the 'intuitive' approach is not without merit.

Sometimes you have to listen to your body in order to figure out a routine, diet and recovery plan which works best.

Rarely does something which looks good on paper pan out to be how you expected! I have found it is always best to combine the intuitive method with a more considered, scientific approach for best long term results.

Everyone wants to make progress, of course. But often we may not be making progress when we think we are because of how hard we are working and sometimes we are frustrated because we think we aren't making progress when we actually are.

A workout log is a must for any lifter, whether they are an athlete, powerlifter or bodybuilder. If you don't have a workout log you mustn't be serious about your training. Keeping a good workout log is easy. Some people may like to use a little palmtop organizer if they have one and it is convenient for them.

By doing this you can keep track of how you've done in each of your workout and work on making progress in either repetitions or weight in your next workout, so progressive overload, one of the key factors behind muscle growth, can be achieved. You also can transfer your written log onto bodybuilding.

com and set up a journal on the forums. This way people can give you extra motivation and assistance with your training and diet. Here is a link with various tests for the components of your overall fitness. By doing fitness tests at consistent intervals an athlete can see what areas he is deficient in and those he is proficient and construct his routine to work on the weak areas and maintain strengths.

It also can show later, if the training routine has been effective in improving these areas of the athletes fitness, from which adjustment's can be made if necessary. View An Outlines Of A Lot Of Fitness Evaluation Tests Here However, diet is much more important than training and therefore it is important you keep track of what you are eating and make sure you are eating towards your goals, whether it be writing it down in a notebook and using a calculator, using a spreadsheet on a computer, or utilizing online resources such as fitday.

com which provide members it's free to register with a free easy to use diet log and a massive database of foods with caloric and macronutrient values already uploaded. Body Composition. However it isn't the most effective way of tracking progress as it is hard to compare what you looked like a month a week ago to what you look like now.

However, as with scales it doesn't give you the full picture in terms of fat and muscle ratio and would be best used in collaboration with other measurement equipment such as body fat measurers. It is important though, if you do want to be measured accurately with a caliper, that you do get someone who is experienced at using one, otherwise you may not get a true sense of what body fat you really are at.

This method is more accurate than calipers, however it will depend on how the machine is standardized on it's accuracy. External factors such as hydration, food intake and skin temperature may also affect the result.

Unfortunately it is quite expensive. This method is the most accurate out of all the methods of measuring body fat, however it will lighten your wallet a fair bit, so beware. It can also be quite impractical having to measure your body fat this way on a regular basis.

Make sure external settings are kept constant such as lighting and placement and that you take pictures in different poses keep them consistent at each interval so all muscle groups can be seen.

Really this is up to you. Some people are able to see results quicker than others, so they may prefer measuring more regularly such as every week or two weeks. Others see results over longer periods of time and may prefer measuring over longer intervals such as a month. Personally I find it helpful to measure progress by the month with things like photos, body fat and fitness tests and measure weight biweekly but others may like to do it at more regular intervals.

It is up to you, but remember that if you measure progress too regularly you may get a false sense of discouragement and if you measure progress not regularly enough then you may not get a true sense of how you are progressing and if you are making any mistakes which you could've adjusted.

So it's important you find a balance. Everyone wants to make progress. Sometimes we may be making progress but think we are not, when at other times we may not be making progress but we think we are. To avoid this from happening we must measure or progress at consistent intervals. Measuring your progress can be as easy as keeping a log of your workouts and diet and calculating your body composition weight, body fat, lean mass etc.

every fortnight. The key to measuring well is consistency; by making sure you try and eliminate as many variables as possible. So don't lead yourself into a false sense of security or be unnecessarily disappointed, and instead keep track of progression and most importantly, keep improving!

The best way to keep both your workouts and diet in check is to firstly form a plan. This means devise a routine or regime for both your training and diet tailored to your own needs and constraints.

Once you've formed a plan it is important you keep track of your progress. This means setting up a training log and measuring progress at consistent intervals, by methods such as scale weight, body fat and even fitness tests. Every so often you should analyze your progress to check how you are going and determine any changes that you may be required to make, if you are hitting a plateau or not making as much progress as you desire.

I am always using a lot of the mentioned progression tracking methods, to track my own progress as being a perfectionist myself, I like to be precise in the way I go about things. I keep an updated log at both athletes. com and bodybuilding. com, which includes how much I lifted that workout indicating if it was a progression or not, my overall rating of the workout and any additional comments, as well as a diet log at fitday.

com, which includes everything I eat, and my macronutrient and caloric totals for the day. As well as this I post pictures every month and regularly do fitness tests such as 1RM on the big 3, VO2 max tests, anaerobic endurance tests and local muscular endurance tests such as max bodyweight push ups.

I also keep a diet log at fitday. com which includes what I ate during the day and the macronutrient and caloric totals. Workout Journal Section: Bodybuilding Workout Journals Athletes Training Journals. Bodyfat Caliper Article inc. Bodyfat Calculator : Calipers: Are They Effective For Measuring Body-fat?

Review Of Other Articles Or "Why Wasn't Mine Picked? Topic of the Week gives forum members the chance to share their knowledge with the world! What's The Best Way To Keep Track Of Your Progress?