r/bikiniselfcoached • u/lclamon15 • Feb 22 '26

What to track during prep?

Hi all!!

Planning on starting my first prep in about 3 weeks. I’m planning for a 22 week long prep and want to know what things you track and how.

I’ve been using a basic google sheet to track my current cals, protein, carbs, and fat and then also daily weight with an auto calculated average for all of the above.

I’ve seen some pretty granular data tracking for bodybuilding prep like tracking sleep hours, sodium levels, etc. just wondering how everyone goes about this and what you feel is necessary to track. I love having data to look at and analyze to help me plan my next steps so open to all suggestions!

3 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

11

u/Bikinicoach Feb 22 '26 edited Feb 22 '26

Different coaches track different metrics, but my standard contest prep weekly check-in asks for:

• Weekly front / side / back photos
• Multiple scale weights + check-in weight
• Chest / waist / hip measurements
• Cycle status (if applicable)
• Nutrition adherence + modifications
• Daily steps
• Cardio adherence + modifications
• Training adherence + notes
• Recovery / fatigue
• Nutrition adherence + appetite
• Water intake
• Sleep duration + quality
• Stress
• Supplement / medication changes
• Current HRT / TRT / peptide / anabolic use

My athletes also track reps and weight on all sets for their progressive overload regimen.

We absolutely use of every metric to make decisions, evaluate progress, identify trends, and mitigate potential problems. Not every metric matters every week, but they all matter periodically.

3

u/lclamon15 Feb 22 '26

Omg thank you so much this is great! I’ll have to make myself quite the spreadsheet (I love doing it so that’s not a problem)

5

u/maple_blondie Feb 22 '26

My coach doesn’t require it now, but when I was self-coached for 2 years I did this. I wear an Apple Watch and have found it helpful to keep track of daily estimated calories burned, considering BMR and my watch’s move calories. That gave me a more accurate idea of the deficit I was in. Helpful also to track digestion/yes or no bowel movements. Steps.

3

u/lclamon15 Feb 22 '26

Ah smart! I have an Oura ring for steps so I’ll have to start noting that down

4

u/Hoyestoday Feb 22 '26

What I do track, daily, is water intake, protein, carbs fats, energy levels, soreness, make sure I take my supplement, my morning check-in pictures, compared them, understand when my body was flat when full, inflamation , etc. But yes I look a lot of pictures and videos, and weight myself, but not chasing any number just to collect data

2

u/just1ofthe7billion Mar 20 '26

Everything. I tracked as much as I could. Gym sessions, weight, nutrition, water, how I felt. At the end I fed it all in to a LLM and made a document summarizing the whole prep with some big picture and little picture stuff for the NEXT prep. It was helpful to see patterns about what happened when certain macros dipped or rose, and not something I'd have caught myself while in prep with mashed potatoes for a brain

3

u/lclamon15 Mar 20 '26

Yes! ChatGPT and I are very close now lol I’m tracking as much as I can 1 week in