5 Amazing Reasons Why Measuring Yourself Will Super-Charge Your Fitness Like Crazy.

Picture this — you strap a device to your arm, and do your workout. When you’re done, it automatically transmits all your workout data to your computer, where you can look over every little piece of information on how you did.

You get beautiful big charts chronicling how much weight you’ve lost, how much lean muscle you’ve built, how many calories you’ve blasted through in that last workout, and you can set big goals for yourself.

Sound crazy? Possibly — using just a little device to track something like lean muscle probably is several years away. But millions (yep, millions) of people are doing this on a lesser scale with the Nike+ system, and it’s worth checking out why it’s so popular.

Why Nike+ Makes People Want to Work Out

You’ve probably heard it of it, since it’s connected to Apple’s iPod, and has a hefty marketing push behind it — you put a little sensor in your shoe, attach a device to your iPod nano (or take your newer touch, iPhone 3GS, or Nike Sportband) and head out for a run.

The device tracks your distance, pace, time, and calories burned, and lets you upload everything into a centralized database at the end, where you can compare your runs to other people, run challenges against your friends, setup customized training programs, and get rewards for hitting your exercise goals.

The Nike+ system really is one of the biggest recent changes in how a huge number of people interact with their fitness, and it’s part of a larger trend, in which recent advances in technology allow us to measure aspects of our lives like never before. Wired magazine recently did a piece on it, and it got us seriously thinking about this whole idea in general.

So we decided to give you five easy reasons why personal metrics — the idea of measuring your effort — can get you motivated to exercise like nothing else.

#5: Five is the magic number.

Wired quotes a Nike exec as saying “once [people] hit five runs, they’re massively more likely to keep running and uploading data.” It turns out five really is the magic number, as something in our brains gets us almost addicted to the amazing level of feedback this information can bring.

Once we see that many runs accumulated, it actually becomes difficult to stop exercising. But here’s the real question — can you do the same for the more intense exercises, like the ones we have here on the site? Can we move past just running?

Sure you can — while you might not get the same gratifying feedback that comes from the nearly-automatic Nike+ site, keeping a solid table of your workouts (and using something like an interval timer’s data) can work wonders. Combine it with a photo, taken at the same angle, in the same place, every day, and you’ll have an incredible narrative of your transformation.

#4: Post-Exercise Takes on a Whole Different Meaning.

Getting in a good routine post-workout strangely becomes just as enjoyable as some of the workouts themselves. When you have a system in place that lets you keep track of everything, sitting down after exercise, and taking a photo become crucial feedback loops that keep you on track.

Instead of just cooling down with a towel and some water, you’re keeping personal measurements that you can go back and look at — amazing for any time your motivation is flagging.

#3: Tiny measurements and miniscule increments make a huge impact.

Even though it seems rather small, each little measurement has a serious impact on your exercise. If you calculate that you ‘only’ burned 200 calories during your last workout, it might not seem like that much — but if you do that four, five, even six times a week, those tiny measurements all become steps forward, towards the bigger goal.

Remember, no one single workout will change your body overnight — every single exercise session is as important as the one before it and the one after it. What matters is actually doing it, and personal metrics can truly help you when you just don’t feel like it.

#2: Accumulation Over Time Makes a Big Difference.

Again, it’s those little increments that make a big impact — when you add up one month’s worth of workouts and see your ‘totals’: total hours, total calories, total weight lost, total amounts of repetitions — and so on — those combined numbers have a huge impact.

That’s partly why Nike suggests that five is that magic number — once you go for five 30-minute runs, you’ve probably burned over 2000 calories, and just seeing that accumulated on a graph does something to our brains that no individual workout or weigh-in or measurement ever can.

#1: Everyone Loves a Good Story.

It’s a natural human inclination — we love a good story, and we’re naturally hard-wired to respond to things with a beginning, middle, and end. We know a presentation that’s full of boring examples and empty platitudes will probably put you to sleep, while one that tells a thrilling little story, with interesting characters and big ups and downs, all coming together at the end in a great resolution — that’s the one that keeps you interested.

Same goes for your exercise — stats are just stats, but when you put them down in a journal, and next to those stats are photos of you, each day, getting more and more in shape, it automatically turns our feedback loops into a great story.

Whether you do this in a table in Excel, in a notebook, on a private blog, or whatever, it doesn’t matter — the important thing is doing it. Coincidentally, if you’re looking for a super-easy blogging platform for something like this, we suggest something ultra-simple, like posterous or tumblr.

These are micro-blogs, and you can keep them private, update them in seconds from your email inbox, phone, or browser, and attach photos to any post. Before you know it, you’ll have a permanent, exciting log of your body’s transformation.

What Are You Waiting For?

Whether it’s Nike+, or one of dozens of iPhone applications, or any of the other systems that let us measure the workouts we do — the potential of these metrics and personal measurement is amazing stuff.

So start simple — get a little blog going, and see what happens when you hit that magic number five — we know you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how well it keeps you motivated.

Best,

Frederick