It is said, that there is a greater chance of achieving personal fitness goals if one logs his or her progress – but what happens if you graph every exercise for one year? I tracked my fitness at USC for one whole year from March 21, 2017 to March 20, 2018, and here are the facts.
- I worked out 169 times during this year. My workouts consisted of sessions at Lyon center, the Health Sciences Campus fitness center, the University Village fitness center, the Cromwell track, and the PED building for Taekwondo (TKD) practices with the USC Taekwondo club.
- I did 46 different types of exercises (see plot 1). Top individual exercises (not counting TKD practices or running at the track) were pull-ups, dips, bench press, deadlift, and stretching. The least favorite ones I only performed once, but this is also because the University Village has a lot of new equipment which wasn’t available at other gyms previously.
Plot 1
- I did 1681 pull-ups over 74 unique sessions, and 268 chin-ups in 20 unique sessions (in sets of 4-15 repetitions). If that sounds impressive…
- I ran a grand total of 25.2 miles at the track (see plot 2), and if I was competing with a snail (which travels at 0.029 mph), it would have passed my yearly total in just 36 days. Plot 2 is a visual representation of my feelings about running. And yes, I am aware how agonizingly close I came to doing the total of a marathon (oops).
Plot 2
- I didn’t run a single mile from November to March (plot 2).
- During visits to the fitness centers, I performed a total of 1-9 exercises per session, and plot 3 shows that most of the time I did a total of 5 exercises per session.
Plot 3
- My most active months were March, February, and September with 20, 19, and 19 workouts in those months respectively (plot 4). August was my least active month with only 8 workouts.
Plot 4
Published on March 21st, 2018
Last updated on April 1st, 2021