Renew Your Workout Motivation With These Fitness Journals Coaches Use to Inspire Athletes

Fitness journals, sometimes called trackers, can help you consistently work toward your health and wellness goals since they allow you to identify trends and patterns, record progress, and stay engaged in your wellness routine. When looking for the right journal for you, it’s important to consider the type of activity you’re tracking, how long you’d like to track, any other metrics you think you’ll want to consider, and the price of the options on the market.

To help you determine the best fitness journal for your needs, we reviewed the most popular options on the market and spoke to personal trainers, athletes, and coaches. Next, a physical therapist from our Medical Expert Board reviewed this article for medical and scientific accuracy.

• Types: There are a variety of fitness trackers on the market, such as general fitness journals, options that include nutrition/meal planning, or journals for specific sports like running or weight lifting. 
• Time frame: Consider how much time you’d like to spend tracking your habits. You can find options that offer 12-week blocks up to 52 weeks or more.
• Tracking sections: In addition to tracking your exercise, you might find sections that help you track other habits, such as sleep, water intake, mindfulness cues, and more.
• Nutrition: Nutrition trackers might include sections for meal planning, grocery lists, calories, macronutrients, daily weigh-ins, and budgeting tools. You’ll want to consider how important it is to track numbers like calories and macronutrients. Some people, including those with a history of eating disorders, are advised not to use these features.
• Quality and design: Higher quality features might include leather covers, an elastic holder, a placeholder, stickers and other customization options.

Why We Like It

Whether you’re new to fitness or looking for a way to keep yourself engaged, the Heveboik Fitness Journal is a good fit for various wellness needs. With sections that allow you to track your goals, exercises, body weight, and how your workout feels, most people will get what they need from this simple but organized fitness tracker. We especially love the spiral-bound notebook style of this tracker, which makes it easy to detail your workouts and stay organized at the gym. If you’re interested in specific tracking features for a sport or exercise activity like weight training, you might want a more specialized journal. 

Product Details

• Duration: 23 weeks
• Size: 8.43 x 5.83 inches 
• Metrics Tracked: Goals, progress, calendar, results, fitness and exercise tracker with rep count

Why We Like It

The Zeitgeist Wellness Daily Food and Fitness Journal is priced at approximately the same amount as your morning latte, and it’s brimming with supportive and inspirational cues to support you on your path to better fitness. Start each day by establishing your objectives and aspirations. Later in the day, you can document your breakfast, lunch, and dinner choices, as well as your exercise, weight, hydration, and sleep. At the end of your day, take a moment to review your progress by jotting down your emotional state and the self-care methods you employed. Note that the binding opens like a book, so you might wish you had a spiral-bound option.

Product Details

• Duration: 13 weeks
• Size: 6 x 9 inches
• Metrics Tracked: Goals for the day, weekly check-in, how you did, goals in the future

Why We Like It

The Fitlosophy 16-Week Fitness-Meets-Gratitude Journal provides 114 pages for daily health assessments, workouts, meal preparation, and mood assessments. It’s a great option for anyone who wants to to tick off their goals and alleviate the pressure of launching a new fitness regimen. The notebook is bursting with motivational quotes and features blank pages designated for personal journaling. Additionally, you’ll discover valuable fitness advice sprinkled throughout the sixteen-week diary.

This product is a great fit for beginners or those who want to improve their healthy habits, but it might not be for you if you’re following a specific workout plan and want space to log each exercise. 

Product Details

• Duration: 16 weeks
• Size: ‎6.5 x 8 inches 
• Metrics Tracked: Gratitude prompts, health assessments, workouts, meal preparation, and mood

Why We Like It

The Erin Condren Wellness Log is an ideal option for anyone looking for a compact fitness journal. Equipped with an 80-page capacity and a sticker sheet, this 6-inch by 8-inch journal allows you to efficiently document six months’ worth of exercise routines, step counts, hydration status, sleep patterns, and dietary choices. It streamlines the process of achieving your fitness objectives through useful goal pages, to-do lists, and health monitoring tools, making it both enjoyable and convenient. Due to its compact nature, you’ll only get about 11 weeks of use out of this planner. If you think you want more logging sheets, you might want to find a bigger planner. 

Product Details

• Duration: 80 daily logs
• Size: 5.7 x 8.25 inches 
• Metrics Tracked: Fitness, sleep, nutrition, water intake, habits

Why We Like It

Crafted in collaboration with fitness professionals, the Clever Fox Fitness and Food Journal covers essential aspects of health and wellness, allowing you to monitor your physical activities, water consumption, and dietary choices. It includes sections for goal-setting, weekly habit monitoring, monthly calendars, daily meals, grocery list planning, mood assessments, and more.

This journal comes recommended by sports dietician nutritionist Mandy Tyler. The Fitness and Food journal is designed for users to set individual monthly goals and then track their daily nutrition and exercise progress towards those goals. The journal includes space for weekly progress tracking as well as reflection, she says. If you want to avoid tracking calories and macros, you might find the nutrition sections to be too numbers-focused.

Product Details

• Duration: 6 months
• Size: 5.8 x 8.3 inches 
• Metrics Tracked: Food journal and meal planner, diary for calorie counting and tracking

Why We Like It

If you find self-motivation challenging, you’ll appreciate Ban.do Wellness Planner’s motivational quotes and mindfulness cues. The journal is brimming with insightful content and valuable insights provided by fitness professionals, as well as specialized segments for setting intentions, self-care, mental health, physical fitness, and tracking your nutrition and exercise. For an extra dose of inspiration, it includes detachable encouragement cards and a variety of enjoyable stickers.

This fitness tracker is well-rounded but doesn’t focus on one specific aspect of wellness. If you’re looking for a journal to track your progress in a specific area, like running mileage, for example, you might enjoy a more targeted tracker.

Product Details

• Duration: 280 days
• Size: 7 in x 10 inches
• Metrics Tracked: Habits, prompts for consideration, rewards

Why We Like It

With a full year’s worth of tracking, we love that the Commit30 Fitness Journal offers both monthly and weekly layouts. You can also set up a 30-day challenge for yourself once you commit to a new goal. The journal is a comprehensive fitness tracking option that helps you focus on movement, health, nutrition, mindfulness, and motivation one day at a time. It also comes suggested by Wan Na Chun, RD, CPT of One Pot Wellness. “I like the diversity that this fitness journal has, which includes monthly calendars, weekly layouts, 30-day challenges, meal planning sections, exercise tracking, and more,” she says. Keep in mind that tf you’re looking for something to use for the short term, you might enjoy a fitness tracker that doesn’t include a full year’s worth of planning.

Product Details

• Duration: 52 weeks 
• Size: 5.7 x 8.25 inches 
• Metrics Tracked: Monthly calendars, weekly layouts, 30-day challenges, meal planning sections, exercise tracking

Why We Like It

If you’re a visual person who loves the feeling of crossing something off your to-do list, you likely will love the KAICN Weekly Goal Notebook. With a weekly table to track your habits, you can easily see how consistent you’ve been. “I like the simplicity of the KAICN Weekly Goal Notebook,” says Sarah Alsing, MS, RD, founder of Delightfully Fueled. “It has a habit tracker table to fill in the habits you want to work on. Habits could be water intake, hours of sleep, and daily walks. The days of the week have plenty of room to write down your plan for physical activity and meals each day. Planning out your week in advance will help set you up for success,” she says. 

If you already have your goals in mind and just need a place to write them down, this fitness journal is great. If you’re looking for more prompts, you might struggle with the self-directed nature of this journal. 

Product Details

• Duration: 52 weeks 
• Size: 8 x 5.7 inches 
• Metrics Tracked: To-do planner, with a weekly schedule planner and habit tracker

Why We Like It

Training doesn’t get more serious than U.S. Navy Seals, which was exactly who the Omega Project Black Book tracker was created for. With logs for exercises, sleep, nutrition, and recovery metrics, this fitness journal runs the gamut of all possible ways you can track your wellness habits. Katie Schimmelpfenning, RD, founder of Eat Swim Win, a dietitian and swim coach shares why she recommends this journal: “This training journal is superior to most on the market because it has athletes checking in with mental health, energy levels, sleep, and nutrition as well as a spot to log your daily workout. This can be an excellent accountability tool and helpful for evaluating training performance.”

If the thought of having more information to track stresses you out, you might want to find a journal that tracks fewer metrics. 

Product Details

• Duration: 16 weeks
• Size: ‎8.58 x 5.24 inches 
• Metrics Tracked: logs exercise, sleep, recovery, mental health, nutrition

Why We Like It

Created by runners, for runners, this journal offers an avenue to track your mileage and process your workouts. Stephanie Darby, RD,  personally uses and recommends the Believe training journal to her running clients because of its clean and simple design that allows you to notice trends over time, increase self awareness, and receive encouragement and motivation as training progresses. “This journal was created by professional runners and includes essays on a variety of topics to support athletes training and mental well being,” she adds.

It’s great for people who are seasoned or beginner runners, but other types of training might need a sport-specific journal. 

Product Details

• Duration: 52 weeks 
• Size: 6.25 x 7.75 inches 
• Metrics Tracked: Designated grids for recording workouts, planning space, motivation, and encouragement

Why We Like It

Every weightlifter could benefit from a workout companion, even if it’s just a personalized notebook. The Habit Nest Weightlifting Gym Buddy Journal accompanies you on a 12-week exercise regimen, helping you keep tabs on your weight, sets, and repetitions. Designed with beginners in mind, this choice includes structured workouts and visual aids for specific exercises, allowing you to dive into your routine with confidence. Each workout is divided into two main muscle groups, and you can document up to four exercises in each section. Additionally, there’s room for goal-setting, cardiovascular notes, and tracking the intensity of your sweat sessions.

Of course, non-lifters will want to skip this one. Additionally, if you’re looking for a longer term fitness journal, this may not be the best option.

Product Details

• Duration: 12 weeks 
• Size: ‎24.21 x 17.7 inches 
• Metrics Tracked: Training program in a journal, with workout and exercise journal/log

Why We Like It

With a full year of tracking logs, the SOLIGT Weekly Meal Planner allows you to monitor your progress through the seasons and track trends and patterns over 52 weeks. We love the breakdown of the weekly meal planner, shopping list, and even a budgeting tool to keep track of your grocery finances. The spiral bound notebook format makes it easy to write your plan for the week and keep your planner organized. We love that you can even tear off the removable grocery list once you’re ready to head to the store.

There’s space for fitness and workout tracking in this planner, but it’s predominately geared towards nutrition tracking. 

Product Details

• Duration: 52 weeks
• Size: 10 x 7 inches 
• Metrics Tracked: Weekly meal planner and food planner with grocery lists and expense tracker

Why We Like It

The Life and Apples Wellness Planner is an undated 90-day scheduler that accommodates your timetable and doesn’t confine you to specific dates. It encourages you to establish diet and fitness objectives with guided prompts for mapping out meals, monitoring workouts, and conducting wellness assessments. It also features a segment for reflecting on your week and acknowledging your achievements. For added convenience, the journal is equipped with a pen holder, a closure band, two bookmarks, personalized stickers, and an internal pocket for notes.

If you’re looking for a more rigid fitness plan to follow, this journal might have too much wiggle room for you.

Product Details

• Duration: 13 weeks 
• Size: 5.5 x 8.2 inches 
• Metrics Tracked: Food journal and fitness dairy with gratitude journal pages

We completed comprehensive market research to choose the best-selling fitness journals to review. We took detailed notes on the key features of each product and how they compared to one another, specifically in the following areas

• Type of fitness activity
• Format of journal: Daily, weekly, or monthly logs
• Additional sections for habit tracking like meal planning, sleep, and water intake
• Prompts for motivation, idea generation, and reflection

• Wan Na Chun, RD, CPT, of One Pot Wellness is a dietitian and personal trainer
• Sarah Alsing, MS, RD, Registered Dietitian and founder of Delightfully Fueled
• Mandy Tyler, MEd, RD, CSSD, LD
• Stephanie L. Darby, RD, LD
• Katie Schimmelpfenning, RD, LD, dietician and Founder of Eat Swim Win

As a registered dietitian, Caroline Thomason has 10+ years of experience in the wellness space. She has personally used a variety of fitness and wellness journals over the years and worked with many clients and colleagues alike who have strong fitness tracking opinions. For this piece, she worked closely with dietitians, personal trainers, and sports coaches to get the inside scoop about real world insights on fitness journals in a variety of categories.