Why I stopped trying to build a fitness journal from scratch
I spent probably six months in 2021 piecing together a tracking system in GoodNotes using blank pages and hyperlinks. It looked nice. I used it for about three weeks before abandoning it. The problem wasn't the aesthetic. It was that maintaining a custom-built journal takes more time than actually doing the work, and I kept finding myself filling the journal instead of lifting. That's when I started looking at premade options. Most of what's out there is overproduced PDFs with 400 hyperlinked buttons and zero practical logic underneath. But there are a few solid ones worth your time if you know what to look for.
Top Fitness Journal Goodnotes
The term "Top Fitness Journal Goodnotes" shows up a lot in searches, and most results are affiliate pages pushing the same five templates. The one that actually held up for me was the fitness journal by Fit & Fierce (available on Etsy). It's not the prettiest one, but the layout is based on actual periodization logic, not just decorative dividers. There's also the one by My Fitness Planner, which leans harder on the visual side but has a cleaner weekly overview page. If you're just searching directly, try "Best Fitness Journal for GoodNotes 2024" and filter by download count, not star rating. Star ratings are inflated by people who download for the aesthetics and never use it.
How to set it up properly
Most people import the PDF and immediately start writing into it like it's a regular notebook. That's wrong. Here's the process that actually works. First, import the PDF into GoodNotes using the "Import" button. Don't drag and drop from the Files app. Drag and drop sometimes splits multi-page PDFs into separate documents and breaks your hyperlinks. Importing through the app keeps everything intact. Once it's in, go to the bookmark sidebar and set up a bookmark for each section. The premade journals usually come with hyperlinks already embedded, but they don't come with bookmarks. Bookmarks let you jump around fast. Without them, you're flipping through pages manually every time you want to check last week's data, and you'll stop doing that within two weeks.
Get the Full Details
Next, disable the template page if the journal has one. Most fitness journals have a welcome/info page that's meant to be skimmed once. You don't need it every time you open the app. Go to Settings > General > disable "Show template pages." This cuts down on visual noise. Now, about the writing tools. Use the fine liner for numbers. Not the pencil. Not the highlighter. The fine liner gives you consistent stroke width, which matters when you're tracking weights over months. When you flip back six weeks later to compare your squat progression, messy pencil marks and variable ink pressure make it harder to read the data. I learned this the hard way after three months of pencil logging and realizing I couldn't tell whether I hit 225 or 235 on a particular session.
What most people get wrong
The biggest mistake I see is treating the journal as a diary instead of a database. People write feelings. "Felt strong today." "Leg day was rough." That's not useful data. Write numbers. Reps. Weight. RPE if you track that. Date. That's it. Another common mistake is over-linking. Some journals have hyperlinks between every single page. It feels impressive. It slows down navigation on older iPads. On an iPad Air from 2020, a fitness journal with 80+ embedded links takes about four seconds to open and sometimes freezes when you tap certain buttons. The workaround is to disable hyperlinks temporarily while writing. Go to the page, long-press the hyperlinked area, and select "Disable link" from the context menu. It only affects your current view, so the links are still there when you're done.
The edge case nobody talks about
Here's a specific problem I ran into: the journal had a monthly summary page that auto-calculated totals using text fields. I filled it out for April, deleted the whole month to reorganize my workouts, and when I retyped the data, the summary page didn't recalculate. It still showed April's old numbers. The "calculation" was actually just a pre-filled text field, not a formula. Nothing in GoodNotes does math on text fields. It was designed to look smart without actually being smart. The fix was simple. I stopped using the summary page's pre-filled fields and just wrote my own totals at the bottom of the monthly log. Takes five seconds per month. The journal's automatic fields were more trouble than they were worth.
When this approach doesn't work
GoodNotes fitness journals are not the right tool if you want real-time analytics. If you want charts that update automatically, graphs of your volume over time, or exportable CSV files, you should be using a dedicated app like Strong, Hevy, or Fitbod. Those apps handle the data structuring for you. A GoodNotes journal is purely manual entry. It's for people who prefer writing things down because the physical act of recording helps them remember and stay consistent. If you're someone who finds writing data tedious, you will abandon the journal. I've seen it happen. Also, GoodNotes syncs through iCloud, which means if you're on a slow Wi-Fi connection, your journal can take 10 to 30 seconds to save after each entry. I've lost data twice because I closed the app before the sync completed. The workaround is to add a three-second pause after you finish typing a page before you close GoodNotes. Annoying, but it's saved me from losing two weeks of workout logs.
Where to find the actual files
Most of the decent options are on Etsy. Search for "GoodNotes fitness journal" and sort by "Best Selling." Avoid anything that doesn't show a preview of the actual pages. The listing photos are often rendered mockups that don't match the real thing. Look for reviews that include screenshots of the journal on an actual iPad. That tells you whether the hyperlinks work, whether the pages are formatted correctly, and whether the PDF is actually usable or just a bunch of decorative pages with no logging functionality. The one I recommend based on my own usage is the Fit & Fierce version. It's $6, comes with about 60 pages, has monthly and weekly layouts, and the hyperlinks actually work. I've been using it for eight months without any technical issues. The My Fitness Planner alternative is $4 and has more decorative elements but slightly less functional structure. Both will work if you put in the effort to set them up correctly. There isn't a free version that's genuinely good. The free ones out there are usually 12-page samples with no actual logging system. Don't waste time on them. If you're going to commit to a digital fitness journal, spend the six dollars and use it properly from day one.
