I first started training seriously in 2004.
As a teenager, my goal was purely superficial. I just wanted to look jacked and attract the opposite sex.
I have (hopefully) grown a lot wiser since then. Now, my training revolves around something much more important: physical and mental health.
Throughout my years of training, I've always logged workouts in an exercise book.
I’d write up programs in Excel, print them out and stick them into the book. I did this year after year. It was
rough around the edges, but it did the job.
When I created the Iron Tanks Workout Journal, I was making something for myself. It’s what I would have loved when I first started training.
The truth is, I wasn’t sure we'd ever create this as a product.
One thought kept playing in the back of my mind:
“Is analogue dying out? People track their workouts on an app. Would anyone want this other than me, a dinosaur who logged workouts in a book before smartphones existed?”
Then one day, I walked into the gym.
Almost everyone was head down, glued to their phone.
Most were scrolling between sets - not recording a workout.
In that moment, I realised the problem with our phones and devices was bigger than I’d thought.
Our attention has been hijacked and fractured by perfectly crafted algorithms. Many of us have lost the capacity to be bored and to sit with our own thoughts. And that quiet time is when the brain does some of its best work.
Now picture sitting there with no phone, letting your mind wander in between sets. That’s when a group of brain regions called the default mode network switches on. It has been linked to creativity and problem solving. It’s why your best ideas so often turn up in the shower.
I started using a journal to improve my training, to give each workout purpose and direction. To help keep me on track and aligned with whatever goals I had set.
But it gave me something I didn’t anticipate. Some of my best ideas and answers to problems have come in the quiet moments between sets, with no phone. Just me, the journal and the weights.
While creating our journal, I spent six months making samples and going back and forth with our graphic designer, tweaking the layout to fit everything onto that A5 real estate as cleanly as possible.
Once finished - it had everything I’d ever wanted to track in a session:
We released one hundred to start. They flew out of the warehouse. Since then, thousands of you now own one, which makes me both proud and humbled.
It seems analogue isn't dead after all. In fact, we might be witnessing an analogue renaissance. With the current slopification of the digital world, I think this is inherently a good thing for our minds.
As for health: we live in an optimisation culture, filled with BS hacks, most of which work at the margins. But building muscle and strength is more than a vanity project. It is one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself. And it goes beyond the physical: resistance training has been shown to improve mental health too.
A journal helps you keep track of that work. Research on goal-setting shows that people who record their progress are more likely to reach their goals, especially when they physically write it down.
By putting the phone away and picking up a journal instead, you reclaim your attention for that hour. Your mind gets a chance to wander and decompress. It’s almost meditative. You’ll train with more focus and direction, and get better results for it.
My hope is that this journal does for you what it has done for me (and so many others): better workouts, new ideas and problems solved along the way.
If this resonates, grab yourself one. Grab one for a friend or loved one too. I am confident it's one of the best investments you'll make in your training.