Preserve Our Present

Well it's July and you know what that means?  It's all about Independence days.  Canada Day, U.S. Independence Day, along with Algeria, Bahamas, and a whole list of others.  One of the best things about our history in this country is that it is so easy to see and experience.  Being from the Philadelphia area, I can drive to Olde City and visit the old exchange building, liberty bell, Ben Franklin's office, the old tavern where the founding fathers used to drink their ale, etc.  Aside from these tangibles, there are so many documents still surviving of daily lives of both the founding fathers and just ordinary citizens of the time.  This fact brings me to the main thesis of the blog entry.  Writing the everyday events, feelings, thoughts was commonplace back then and sadly it has almost completely disappeared nowadays.  Not only will this have ramifications on our future and how future generations will not be able to relate to our daily lives, it also can affect athletes.

For this month I'm going to ask everyone that reads this post to keep a journal every day for the month of July.  Each entry doesn't need to be long, or profound.  Ken Burns won't be creating a documentary about your thoughts like they are old Civil War letters  "My dearest Agnes, it has been a fortnight since I heard from you...etc", however it will be a good account of your observations as well as a log of your training.  There are a host of things happening in the world right now between UK leaving the EU, 2016 election, upcoming Olympics that you may forget about in the next 20 years or so, or you may want to pass on to your children/grandchildren to give me an idea of what was happening.  Along with the historical benefits, there are a number of benefits specific to athletes also.

Journal-ling for athletes can help in a number of ways.  For one, a day to day account of training, and how the athlete feels and responds to training can benefit not only the athlete but the coach as well.  The coach can notice a trend in training (both positive and negative) which can help when programming future programs.  This will also help the athlete in turn by increasing the athlete's awareness of the program design.

Another benefit is to be able to recognize over-training before it becomes a problem.  An athlete logging their thoughts, feelings, and stressors can help show symptoms of over-training which can lead the coach to backing off of the training, or adjusting it to better help future workouts.  Going in the same vein, a journal may also show a lack of sleep, warm-up, flexibility training and other things that may hinder athlete performance.  In closing, try to take the month of July and keep a journal of all things athletic and otherwise.  Maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't but give it a shot.