USMS has finally released it's new fitness logs (FLOGs), available to members. This is indeed a big change.
Unfortunately, for me, this is not easily adaptable to my needs. I have developed and kept my own personal fitness log over the last 15 years, tailored to my own special needs, and don't see how the new FLOGs at USMS can duplicate that effort without some major changes.
The principal example is what I do for exercise. There are a substantial number of available categories but two of my main ones are missing (rowing and cross-country skiing). I realize that I can put these in as 'other' but, because two exercises are mixed together, it is not so easy to look at results over the long haul. Further, as the years have gone by, I have added additional categories and would like to be able to do the same with the FLOGs.
Two other fitness categories that I use are Maximum Heart Rate (supposed to decay with age, as you know, but does it really?) and blood pressure. Neither of these are available in the USMS FLOGs.
I think that, to make the new FLOGs useful for everyone, they need to be individually configurable. I don't do pilates or yoga so, if those categories could be replaced, for me, by cross-country skiing and rowing that would take care of the exercise part. Having the ability to add other fitness measures would also help.
What I'm suggesting is the ability to have interactive programmable code for the entry input panel. Since I haven't programmed for years in HTML (and never in Java), I'm not sure how doable this is.
The final problem is merging records from past years. My fitness log is Excel based and the ability to import these data would be very valuable. I probably would not choose to hand-type the thousands of entries. That means that I cannot easily compare multiple years graphically or in table form. Somehow, this defeats the purpose of my chain of fitness records.
If these problems can be overcome I would anticipate transferring my logs over to USMS. If they cannot be dealt with, then definitely not.
One really nice feature of the FLOGs is having the data in one place and not having personally to deal with the archiving. USMS is certainly on the right track here, its just that the Devil is in the details. One of my thoughts is that this would give great incentive to many more people to keep fitness logs. In the long run this will produce a database of absolutely invaluable information to see how fit people age and what they have to do as they age to keep fit. A couple of years ago, I issued a challenge on these Discussion Forums for people to post summaries of their yearly fitness records. There was not a single response, even though many people looked at the thread. It was discouraging to me to think that not many people consider this important. Hopefully, the new FLOGs would 'right' that situation.
