Easily one of the most effective ways to improve the quality of your workouts is to write them out by hand in a notebook.
It’s something I did for the first four or five years I trained and I credit it with not only building a rock solid foundation of strength and muscle that I’m still benefitting from over a decade later, but also instinctively “knowing” how to put together a smart, balanced routine on the fly (especially useful when travelling, on holiday, or when I’m just terminally bored of my usual routine and fancy a break for a few days to a week or so).
This works, I believe, due to a phenomenon legendary copywriter Gary Halbert calls “neurological imprinting”.
In essence, Gary told people to write out by hand top performing over and over again to, and I quote:
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“have a neurological imprint on a cellular level of what it feels like… to actually write… “killer” sales messages.”
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And so it is when you write out your workouts over and over again, so long as you are taking them from a reputable source, of course.
Certainly beats being dependent on a smartphone app to tell you what to do (which means bringing your phone to the gym and all the distractions and wasted time that comes with that). Or getting ShatGPT to do your thinking for you and having it vomit up something average at best and injurious at worst.
The only downside is it’s Yet More dull and repetitive work. But if you’re afraid of that then you might as well not bother training at all because you’re never going to achieve anything of consequence.
Anyway, you won’t be at all surprised to learn that I generally recommend clients of mine transcribe the training programmes I give them into a notebook of some sort.
Not always, but most of the time. And definitely when I am having them do something more complex than my orthodox “Two and Two” prescription (i.e. two identical or close to it full body weightlifting and two cardio sessions).
Like, for example, what I teach in Operation: Winnow – the system for getting those who have gained weight (typically after losing it) back on the straight and narrow as swiftly (or at least as swiftly as you can do these things in a safe, sustainable manner, which is a fair bit slower than what you are likely expecting or have tried before).
For a high level overview of that, listen to the short (circa 10 min) audio on the below URL and, if you feel so moved, follow the instructions to work with me personally and privately to put it into action (you’ll find those at the bottom of the letter beneath the audio):
https://philtyreman.co.uk/winnow/
Thank you,
Phil Tyreman
P.S. The whole article I quoted from is called “Neurological Imprinting” and can be read, for free, on Gary Halbert’s site if this is something you are interested in learning more about.