This is part II…  Find part I here.

At the end of that article, I said I would jump into the pros and cons of my little spreadsheet, so here goes:

pros:

• It is nice to set goals and work towards them.  Goals make it more likely that I won’t skip workouts.
• The tracking I have set up lets me know exactly where I am in my progress towards the goal, and lets me know how far behind I am (if when I do get behind).
• I made a “static” goal and an “adjustable” goal, in case I was too aggressive (or not aggressive enough!) in my targets.  For example, just a couple weeks in, and I can tell that the push up goal will be fairly easy to reach, while the running goal may not be.  That will depend on if my knee and hip can handle that amount of running…

cons:

• I am combining push ups, pull ups, and dips into my bodywork/strength column.  So while I have specific strength goals for those three exercises, and an overall time goal for general strength work, I am not tracking a lot of other exercises I do such as squats, or curls, or whatever.   So I will have to be careful not to let the 3 specific exercises dominate my strength training time just to meet those goals.  If I continue this approach over time, I will try to rotate different exercises into to the spreadsheet, or perhaps just add a couple more to get a more rounded list of exercises in there.
• I can already see that I am going to have to be careful to not let the spreadsheet dictate to me what I should be doing, but let my body dictate — especially in terms of pushing my knee/hip too hard.  The running goal is probably a bit aggressive, so I will have to be careful not to run just because I am behind in my tracking, if my knee does not feel up to it.
• I typically have one or two big events a quarter — something like a 2 or 3 day back pack trip on the Appalachian trail.  Those are going to be a little hard to fit into this model, but I will figure something out.

No matter what, I am still having fun with this method, and that is a good thing.  As long as I am having fun, I am more likely to keep at it.