Keeping a workout journal is one of the most effective ways to get the most from yourself in the gym and the weight room. Here’s how to maximize its use.

Okay, so you’ve decided to fully commit to your goals in the gym, or you are frustrated with your lack of progress, or you’ve come to appreciate the power of logging your workouts, and you are ready to crack open the pages of your first workout journal.

But where to start? What should you write out?

There is literally no end to the amount of stuff you can throw into the pages of your workout journal. So much so, in fact, that you can quickly lose yourself in the minutae of detail if you let things get away from you.

Here is what you should be keeping track of with your workout journal to insure maximum benefits while also helping to make the workout journaling habit a sustainable one.

Sets/reps/weights. This is the foundation of your workout journal—the nuts and bolts of what make up your workout. Write clearly enough that you will be able to decode your scribbling next week, or next month, or even next year. (Trust me—you will come back and flip through these bad boys later in life. Usually with a lump of pride in your chest.) Make sure to get all of the essentials for your main lifts, including 1RM’s.

How you felt that day. How is your body holding up to training? Feeling better than expected? Try to draw conclusions and connections from why you are feeling the way you are with your lifestyle choices. It’s easy to say that we truly understand how lifestyle affects our workouts, but until you see it written out on paper it’s easy to duck taking responsibility for those choices.

Stress levels. Believe it or not, how stressed you are affects your workouts. Increased stress compromises your immune system, opens you up to increased likelihood of injury, and affects how long it takes you to recover between workouts. There will always be stretches of time in our lives where stress rears its ugly head—and while it may not always be our fault that it happened, it’s our responsibility to deal with it.

How much you slept. Pound for pound sleep is the biggest performance enhancer out there. If it’s maximum recovery you want simply get 9-10 hours of sleep tonight. Seriously. It will outperform any supplement, any day of the week, and the best part? It’s free and utterly enjoyable. Getting adequate sleep also means improved cognitive function, better moods, and yup, better workouts. The term “win-win” has never been so apt.

How you are eating. Almost all of us could stand to eat a little bit better. (And for some of us, a whole lot better.) The first key to making change, whether in the gym or in the kitchen, is having the self-awareness necessary to facilitate it. Using your workout journal as a de facto fod journal can help you shine a light on how you are actually eating, better informing your path forward.

Your next workout. Now for the real kicker—use your workout log to write out tomorrow’s workout. This will help you stay more consistent, and it will also help you progress faster. Why is this? Because we are profoundly more ambitious with our training when planning it compared to the moments when we walk into the gym, and our brains are immediately scrambling for excuses to avoid the physical and mental stress to come. Use the workout journal as a checklist, a roadmap for your goals in the weight room.