Track it before you train through it.

Why it matters

Blocks end from niggles, not from bad programming

Almost nobody's training year is ruined by choosing the wrong set-and-rep scheme. It's the hip that started grumbling in week three, got trained through because there was nowhere to write it down, and became six weeks off in month two.

The problem isn't that people don't notice. It's that a vague memory of "it's been a bit sore lately" is not something you can make a decision against. A dated severity is.

Capture

Logged against the session it came from

Mentioning it is enough. The injury records the body area, the side, the type, when it started, and — the useful part — a link to the workout and the specific movement it followed.

That link is what turns a list of complaints into something you can reason about. When the same shoulder flares up three times and twice it was overhead pressing, that pattern is visible rather than remembered.

• Body area, side, and type
• The date it started and the session it followed
• The specific exercise, when there was one
• A list of movements to avoid while it's live
• Free-text notes for anything that doesn't fit a field

Recovery

A trajectory, not a snapshot

One severity reading tells you almost nothing. The same reading three times over a fortnight tells you whether to back off, hold, or carry on — which is the actual decision you're trying to make.

A check-in is a date and a severity out of ten, with room for how it feels, whether it limited your movement, what triggered it, and whether you trained around it. "Shoulder's a three today, was a six on Monday" is a complete check-in.

Closing it out

Injuries resolve, and the history stays

An injury moves from active to recovering to healed, with the date it closed. Say it's better and it resolves itself — there's no stale list of things that hurt eighteen months ago cluttering the page.

The record isn't deleted, though. A shoulder that has been through this cycle three times looks very different from one that's had a bad week, and that difference is only visible if the closed ones are still there.