Is it important to measure progress?
Quantifying time spent moving our meat castles
As we careen through 2025 (!) it’s worth pumping the brakes and taking a moment to consider progress:
Are we progressing?
How are we measuring our progress?
What does it even mean to progress in a gym/fitness/ wellness scenario?
The talking heads of health and fitness go on and on about Goals, Progress, and Change. Usually they’re measured through quantifiable means like increase in muscle size, heavier weights, faster times, or that fitness industry go-to: weight loss.
But what exists outside of all of these?
How can we measure progress if we’re not stacking plates (lifting heavier weights) or concentrating solely on the aesthetic?
The normal go-to is performance: improved physical performance expressed through the ability to accomplish fitness-related tasks like lifting weights, doing complex choreographed movements (like pistols, handstands, or exercise flows), standing on unstable objects, running faster/longer, or jumping higher/farther.
Beyond those feats of athleticism, we focus in the gym on feeling better: reducing pain/discomfort, recovering from injury, or trying to counteract sedentary living—less objective measurements of how our body and mind feel.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting these results from your exercise: if you are interested in sports and want to improve, go for it. We all need to move more to make up for all the time we spend sitting, and yeah, getting stronger can help injury recovery and reducing our overall risk of injury….But what if we don’t really care about any of that? I mean, yeah, we don’t want to get hurt or die early (if possible), but what if we’re not motivated by any of those things?
Do we arbitrarily go to the gym and just go through the motions?
How long is that really going to last?
Maybe some stuff is exciting for a little while—once we realize we can start to put some weight on the bar doing deadlifts, it feels pretty damn good. But maybe we hit a plateau, or just stop caring about deadlifts—what then? Force ourselves to go into the gym and do deadlifts because we’re “supposed to?” Hire a trainer to bully us into do deadlifts?
How long is that going to last?
The truth is that motivation is fleeting, and that’s okay. The reality of life is that everything is temporary (not to get too dark), including our desire to pursue goals.
And often life gets in the way: maybe we were stronger last year, but then got hurt, busy, or distracted, and this year we can’t deadlift as much.
Or maybe last year we were really into deadlifts, but this year we couldn’t care less and now handstands are the bees’ knees.
Or maybe we didn’t even start working out until 3 months ago and all of these different things to try are so overwhelming and seem impossible to actually improve upon.
So what do we do then?
If progress is necessary to success, if we need a way to measure forward movement in order to prevent stagnation, how can we quantify progress beyond simple numbers? Beyond externally imposed and measured standards?
First off, progress is not a straight line: the way to our goals (whether they be internal or external), is not linear. We cannot expect to go from point A to B unobstructed. If I could put 5 pounds on the bar every time I squatted—even 5 pounds a month—after my 25ish years of training my squat should be (if I started at zero pounds)...let me do the math...about 1500lbs.
I'm very sorry to say it's not even close to that. Should I blame my training methods? Even if they were subpar, or if I took a couple vacations, I should still be squatting around 900lbs. I’m sorry to tell you, I can’t lift that, either.
The point is this: our bodies, lives, and minds will never allow for endless improvement, so we need as many ways to track progress as possible. We can use linear, externally quantified data like weight, speed, distance, reps, movement complexity, etc. We can also use internally defined measurements like ease of movement, effort, and body awareness.
External quantification allows us to easily measure something on a chart, graph, or table. It’s clear and simple. But, as mentioned above, there is a limit to how far we can push external measurements, and the path of improvement is rarely consistent and linear.
As an example: weights don’t always feel the same. Some days 20lbs feels light, and other days, it’s glued to the floor. On days like those we can look internally, and track progress through feeling, understanding, and effort: how does the 20lbs feel today? Can you perform more reps with less effort? Does the movement feel more familiar than last time? More fluid, stable, or confident?
Both are valid, and both can be tracked, granted we consistently record, review, and compare our data.
So write in your journal, on your workout sheet, or in your training app.
Figure out what kind of progress you want to make, and track it.
But remember that it won't be linear, and that's okay. Having a goal and going on the journey is really the point at the end of the day, anyway. What you learn about yourself in the process is ultimately the goal, and the process of trying is what matters.