Ways to track weights for gym lifts

Newbee
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I’m trying to use beeminder to track how much i can lift on various exercises in the gym. Say my goal is to reach a 100kg bench press by date X; what’s the best way to set this up? It seems like the best way is to use a ‘gain weight’ goal, however this requires daily entries.

I’d prefer something along the lines of entering my current bench press (say, 85kg), the goal mass, an end date, and an interval at which to check in (probably once or twice weekly). Is this type of setup unable to be done on beeminder?

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I guess by now you’ve tried a few things. Let us know what worked or didn’t work for you…

Hardly any Beeminder goals actually require daily entry – the commitment can be expressed in terms of a daily average rate, but if you do ‘enough’ once a week, that’ll see you through to the following week.

For me, when I measure fitness goals, I never want to be in a situation where I cause myself injury in the name of following a set program. Particularly with weights, I’d want to allow myself to ‘stall’ or even de-load in order to make more long term gains.

So I’d probably set this up as a goal to do my routine, properly and safely, three times a week. Even though the routine has to do with increasing the weight I can ultimately lift, that’d be a do more goal type.

Which is pretty much what you described, but instead of entering your current bench press, you’d just enter a one (1) to say that you followed the routine that day, and maybe put the current weight in the comment field.

(There’s an advanced feature that would let you enter the weight in the datapoint field and it’ll update the graph as though it’s a one. Not accessible to everybody though, and not hugely user friendly.)

In addition to a goal that focusses on the bench press, I’d probably also create one that’s about following my chosen program, and one that’s about improving my flexibility/mobility. All of those are likely to be ‘do more’ goals with a commitment of a few times each week.

If I didn’t have anywhere else to see the progression in weight, I might also create an almost-flat goal so that I could see that graph too. But I wouldn’t commit myself to anything aggressive on that, because it should be a result of doing other things that are more enforceable. Generally speaking, beemind the inputs rather than the outputs.

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Ooh, I never saw this at the time, I’m sorry! Just noticed it because @philip posted. So just in case other folks are interested in this, I thought I’d stick my oar in now.

Alas, I think we give people that impression a bit too strongly. It’s great to hear that was your impression, because it helps guide what we do in future, so thank you very much for sharing!

So yeah, entering data every day is certainly one way to do a weight goal (and one that people seem to find very effective since they see immediate effects of everything they do), but we don’t require daily entries. As long as you’re above the road on a certain date if you draw a line across from your last datapoint, you’re fine. So that method would work.

Personally I endorse what @philip says about having a do-more goal for working toward it. It’s not a universal rule… but in general, I find it’s better to keep it simple.

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