Value of entering old workout history?

[Charles Maze]

Is there a value for entering old workout data into FitSync?

I have a three ring binder of old workouts that I refer to for ideas, inspiration, and stats.
Is there any benefit of entering old data into FitSync?
I can see having better insight into past performance would provide morivation for current activities.
I am interested in your opinion based upon the format and purpose of the site.

As have a background as a SQL DB admin, my tech brain wonders about the value of old datat on your servers.
How long do you keep old data?
Do you have a data purge date? (Old workourts purged after thre years?)
Do you have a way to bulk load old data? Using comma delimited?
Do you have a way to export a users data?  If I loaded my data into FitSync, couIld I export it from Fitsync into ? Excel? access? SQL?

Thanks,

Charles

[Team FitSync]

Very good question, Charles.

Many benefits to putting your data into FitSync; you can do long term analysis of your progress and keep all of your fitness data secure and accessible from anywhere.  It can also be helpful for your medical records in terms of knowing your activity levels during different periods of your life and project trends and avoid injuries.  For example, if you remember the summer of 2005 as your fittest and happiest, it could help to see exactly what was going on with your training (unless of course that was when you were dating Pamela Anderson).  But seriously, use your data and learn from it.

For example, an interesting phenomenon is an increase of overuse injuries in non-professional athletes.  As more and more weekend warriors work out harder and longer there is a greater chance of injury.  The message is to pay attention to your body and match your activity levels to your body and ability.  So, if you love to run you might not want to run 80 miles a week on hard pavement for 40 years.  Instead, mix up your training with some trail running or time at a University track with a nice cushy urethane surface and get new shoes regularly.  Even if you're an Olympic champion middle distance guy, you're not going to train at 50 the way you trained at 21 during the trials.

You see where I'm going with this - the more data you have the more valid your projections AND the more quantifiable is your progress AND the more sound your training decisions become.

Regarding data storage, the short answer is that we keep your data forever kind of like the permanent record I was threatened with in Catholic school (Sister Rosemary is probably still mad about that chalk in her eraser).  This can also produce some impressive numbers.  Our first customers came online in January of 2001 and some of our "epoch" users have a huge amount of data like our founder and CEO Paul Wittrock (he was the 12th registered account in the system) with over 17 million lbs lifted and 5,000 miles run or cycled or swum in the past 7 years (he swims a lot). 

To enter data you can use the Web interface to enter data for an entire workout or an individual exercise.  We don't have any kind of batch upload function that lets you throw up say a .csv file of 5 years of data but you can EXPORT all of your FitSync data into a .csv file for Excel or the tool of your choice. 

The value of your data is to show (1) your progression over time and (2) the volume of your training so here's an idea - instead of entering every single value for the past 5 years you can aggregate it a little.  Here's what I mean:

If you only want to show progression, you don't need to log every time you did an exercise.  You only need enough to plot a trend so if you do pushups 3 times a week, log the historical details once a month.  That will be enough to show your progress over time. 

However this won't show your volume, only that on March 1 2003 you could do 20 pushups non-stop and on August 1 2004 you could do 73.  You might also want to know how many total pushups you perform in a given month (if your elbows are killing you your Doc might find it relevant that you've averaged 3500 pushups a month for the past 4 years). 

The key issue is how varied and voluminous your data is.  It's also easier to enter historical data in workout format (rather than individual exercises) because you can enter data for a bunch of exercises at one time.

Hope this helps.

John

[Charles Maze]

John,

Thanks for your insight. 
I have a much better understanding.  Thank you.  And you have a great sense of humor.   
I think I had the same nuns in school except by the time I hit Catholic middle school; the nuns had cast off their habits and were “liberated”.  Sadly, some of the effectiveness of the nuns was lost when Sr. Mary Denise looked, dressed, and talked just like Mrs. Smith down the hall.  However, I digress.

The long term analysis possibilities sound great.  And that was why the idea of adding old data sounded so appealing. 
And I didn’t know about the export ability; that is great as well.

I wanted to make sure the data was not tied to a form, workout out, or exercise within my profile (like in Lotus Notes unstructured data format) where if I added a year’s worth of old data and deleted an exercise or workout from my profile, I wouldn’t wipe out the data as well.

Sorry there is no bulk-add feature but the exercise of adding old data will only enhance my familiarity with the FitSync interface.

Thanks again for your thorough response.  (And I am so impressed with your CEOs numbers.  Whoa!)

Charles

And how did you know about Pamela in '05?  We tried to keep in so hush-hush. Those darned paparazzi! 

[Paul]

Hey Charles, now I know who Pamela dumped me for in '05! 

But seriously, I've found historical data very helpful in reviewing what kind of training I was doing during periods when I felt the best and made the most progress.  It also helps when trying to figure out why a pesky injury won't go away. 

You also asked about database structure and how exercises behave in relation to workouts.  Maybe this will help; exercises exist independent of workouts so you can remove a particular exercise from all your workouts and even delete it (you're not really deleting it - more accurately "archiving" it) and your data will be fine. 

[Geoffrey Hegedus]

Hi, I couldn't find the area to export to Excel, can anyone give me a quick pointer please?

[Team FitSync]

Geoffrey-
Our apologies for the late reply to your question.  We are in the process of upgrading this function and should have it back live next week.  Once it's back you'll be able to download your data in .csv for import to Excel or app of your choice.  Again, sorry for the late reply and any inconvenience of not having this feature available at the moment.

Best of health to you,

John Morgan