Journal Writing in the Weight Room

(2 Minute Read)

The first objective I set for my weight training classes this year was to establish a routine. One thing that has helped my students and myself get into a great routine was the use of journal writing. The moment they walked into the weight room, we allocate five minutes for journal writing, followed by a warmup and lifting session. Each day I would provide them with a simple prompt, usually regarding motivation or current sporting events. My only requirement was that they write two complete sentences on the topic using their English, Language Arts (ELA) tools. The daily activity of journaling in the weight room provided key benefits for our program, which includes the building of relationships, goal setting, and the growth of writing skills.

Building Relationships: Being the first year at my current school it was imperative that I get to know my students. Reading their responses to my daily prompts afforded me the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of who they are and help me form a bond with my students.

Goal Setting: Once we were about midway through the school year, I introduced goal setting to the routine. On the first day of the week (Monday or Tuesday in our block schedule) students would answer five questions that focused on goals.  The five questions I used were inspired by legendary football coach Bob Ladouceur (De La Salle High School, CA).  Coach Ladouceur used commitment cards to teach goal setting.  The commitment cards were a 3X5 index card that players would write their goals on. At De La Salle High School, the commitment cards were used by each player to set a practice, weight room, and game goal. The player would set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Based) Goals for each and be paired with a teammate.  The teammate they were paired with for that week was to hold them accountable for those weekly goals (Yaeger, 2015). I decided to modify the cards to Weights class with the following:

1. What are your weights class goals for this week?
2. What are your sport’s practice goals for this week?
3. What are your sport’s game/competition goals for this week?
4. How are you holding yourself accountable?
5. What did you do last week to meet your goals?

Connecting PE to Writing Skills
Many PE programs aim to integrate other academic topics like ELA or Math into lessons. Using journal writing is an easy way to accomplish this. The students are writing in class every day, which in of itself is a win, but it is also a great opportunity to integrate other content areas as well. For instance, our spring sports programs had a meeting regarding the dangers of vaping. The journal prompt I used the following week allowed the student-athletes to reflect on what they had learned about vaping.

Overall, I was very pleased with how the use of journal writing in the weight room helped me meet our objective of developing a consistent routine in the course, which in turn allowed me to get to know my students better, increased the use of goal setting practice among my students, developed the student’s intrinsic motivation towards weightlifting, and helped them practice their writing skills.

References
Yaeger, D. (2015, October 21). Want to keep winning? Keep your commitments — Here’s how. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/donyaeger/2015/10/21/want-to-keep-winning-keep-your-commitments-heres-how/#b34426a50014