Tracking Your Jiu Jitsu Life

          In have talked with may training partners of mine, past and present, about the value of record keeping in sports.  I have always kept personal records of mine in regard to wins and loss, later diets and training programs were added to the record list.  While the training camps and diets had a great detail there was nothing linking them together.  Surely I did not just stop training all together when not prepping for a fight or tournament.  Last summer I also began keeping track of my Jiu Jitus promotions and list things I wanted to work on ... doing so via Google Docs spreadsheet.  In my last blog post I talked about "dope sheets" or per belt game plans.  I started incorporating these as well.  But to be honest, the whole thing was kind of haphazard and unorganized.  It was a log, yes, but there wasn't too much productive going on about it.
          Earlier this week I found this spreadsheet posted on a forum.  It gave me some really good ideas to breath some new life into my training logs.  So for now, my "Jiu Jitsu History" spreadsheet has four tabs.  Training Log, Things to Work On, Competition Records, and Promotions (dope sheets found on this page as well).  Here are some screenshots:

Training Log

     I apologize for the tight fit, but you can pretty well see what I've got going on.  The year (2013) is color coded blue and you can see the next year in orange started to the right of it for later use.  The second Row lists the days of the week and the total hours of training that week.  Below there are the dates listed for each day of that month as well as the techniques covered on that day.  I also make note of rest / sick days and other activities (such as rock climbing) just to show that there wasn't an error of omission.  You can also see that there are two running tallies on the right side of the page.  One is the total training hours for the current month, and the other is the running total of training hours this year (cumulative of previous months).  

Things to Work On

        This is pretty simple in its construction.  There is a column for each year.  Under each of the yearly columns there are two sub-columns, one for the date and one for the details.  The dates usually go on a weekly basis.  The detail section is where I pick something from the Checklists below or something I'm curious about to either work in my sparring and free time, or to ask an instructor when asked for "any questions."

Competition Records

          Again, this is pretty cut and dry.  There are columns for the Season (year), Tournament, Matches, Weight (and winning method), Weight Class, Total Career Wins, Career Wins by Points, Career Wins by Submission, Career Losses, Career Losses by Points, and Career Losses by Submission.  So it starts off with the year and the tournament.  Then the matches for each tournament take up their own row so that it is kind of an indent of that tournament's entry.  The "Match" section also includes the winning method (points, rear-naked choke, armbar, etc...).  Next I note the weight class for the tournament.  The rest of the columns are simply running totals where the most recent entry (bottom of page) would tell you how many matches I've won / lost by which methods.  Something I'd like to incorporate later in my career is a pie graph showing the results of these different stats as that is easier for me to read.

Promotions, Goals, and Checklist / Dope Sheets

          These started pretty simple, but the recent aesthetic tune up I gave them really made them a lot more readable and usable.  Starting on the far left there is a list of my promotions and which instructors I received them under.  There is also a goal listing of when I want to earn my next belt by, as well as a distant goal such as (for me) competing as a black belt in the adult division.  Then we have sections color coded per belt requirements via the Alliance checklist.  I talked about this in my last post as well.  Right now I am a Blue Belt, so the blue list is on the right and I am working on filling in and practicing the techniques required for Purple Belt.  Once I am a Purple Belt, the blue and purple sections will shift to the right so that the brown section can bump up and take precedence.

     Now that I've shared my whole "game" and record keeping strategies with the world I suppose I'll have to hit the gym extra hard from now on :-D   Rock Loud and Keep Rollin' !

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