02/18/2022
Reason 3️⃣ of 8 from Coach Jake Winder at on WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP A POLE VAULTING JOURNAL…
“3. PROVING YOUR IMPROVEMENT. One of the main reasons that I took the time to journal was because I wanted proof that I was getting better. For years I would just have to hope I was getting better based on how I felt on a particular day, or what I would call emotional based progress. For example, here is a statement of a person who is basing their progress off of their current emotional state, “Well, I must be getting better, because I feel great today, and am having a great workout!” Unfortunately, judging your progress based solely on your emotional state can be a very rocky road and that “great day” you are having today, could be followed up by a terrible day tomorrow, and a statement like, “Well, I should just quit pole vaulting forever, because I am having a terrible workout today. I must not be getting any better”. In two days, you have gone from one end of the spectrum to the other. This type of judgement on your progress is completely unreliable and a story of fiction that is made up in your head. Your emotions are very hard to quantify. The person making these statements could be trending to have the best season of their lives, or could be completely tanking, but if you were to ask them, “Prove to me you are getting better”, or “Prove to me you are getting worse”, they would not be able to answer either question with any reliable data. Logging your workouts in a journal gives you tangible evidence of your improvement. When you have large amounts of data logged, you can grab your journal after a tough workout and really find out what direction you are going, and more often than not, you will probably come out of that reflection time being more confident about where you are at. This is why I find the feature of the Performance Summary in the Pole Vault Log Book to be so effective. It is very easy to see what direction you are going over time.” (link to the full blog post in bio)