What’s up everyone – good afternoon and welcome to today’s edition of “Something You Didn’t Know You Needed to Know”, with your host, Owner of Spark Fitness, Connor Green.

‍Today I’m writing a simple guide to the “PR”.

‍What it Stands for:

PR stands for “personal record”, and it DOES NOT stand for Public Relations. Well maybe it does. But not here.

I’ve heard “PB” said a bunch, which stands for “personal best” – but that’s more commonly said overseas so, does it really matter?

What it is:

A personal record is a mark of improvement in the gym in one of any number of ways. It could be that you lifted more weight than you ever have – like maybe you benched 150 this time and last time you did 145.

It could be that you did more reps than you ever have. Say this time you did 10 reps of squats and last time you only did 9.

Or that you did a work out faster than you ever have. Say this time you ran a mile in 6:59, and before you ran it in 7:03.

There are no hard and fast rules for how you apply your PR. For example, you could “PR” your attendance at the gym from 3 days a week to 4. The record you broke was average gym attendance.

Why is This so Important:

This is so important because this is how we make progress.

This is how we know for a fact that we are losing weight, gaining muscle, getting fitter, and adding years to our life and happiness to our days.

Joining a gym NEEDS to be about setting PRs. 

If you’re not – you need to seriously ask yourself – what is the point of going?

If you are not regularly improving, and know that you are improving with data (we track all of our workouts), then What. Is. The. Point?

Is it to get intensely sore?

Is it to feel like you are dying?

Or is it to get better?

It should be to get better. And believe it or not, soreness or level of dying from a workout are REALLY poor indicators of how effective that workout was. 

At Parkside – we keep it simple. We regularly set PRs in the gym – for newbies, every single day for up to and over a year – and for intermediates (which fewer than 1% of people ever become) every single week.

And we celebrate them. When members set a PR the whole group celebrates.

If you go months or years without PRing something is wrong. It could be your nutrition, your sleep, your hydration, the amount of training you’re doing, or countless other variables.

Focus on setting simple, tiny, consistent PRs in the gym on a daily basis, and you will transform, and it will be so easy you might feel a little guilty about it…

-Connor

When you’re ready to work together, we have options:

‍1) Book an appointment with me here. OR

2) Shoot an email to [email protected]

3) Connect with me on instagram @connorgreen3000 or @parksidecrossfit