Pros and Cons of having a Training Partner

Having a consistent training partner is a problem that I wrestled with for many years when I first started bodybuilding. I knew that I needed to train to failure with weights that were continually challenging me. I also knew that using forced reps was an effective technique to use. Having a training partner certainly makes it easy to use incorporate these two aspects into your training. Your partner can give you spots when using heavy weights, motivate you to go to the gym when you are feeling lazy, and can be there to help you get forced reps.

You are probably asking yourself if it is so beneficial to have a training partner then why did you wrestle with the idea of having a training partner in the first place? Well there is a drawback with having a regular training partner.

The problem with having a regular training partner is that it prevents you from being flexible with your training. Unless you have the best training partner in the world who is willing to work around your schedule and train however you want to, you are likely to encounter friction in the relationship when one of you needs to deviate from the program. There can be endless reasons why you may need to deviate from your regular training program such as…

• training around an injury

• studying for exams

• wanting to change things up by doing different exercises

• feeling over-trained and need an extra day of rest

• late from work

• need to care for a sick child

• preparing for a contest

• etc.

For me personally, I like to change things up last minute. If I feel that I am particularly strong on a given day I may switch the workout to incorporate more basic exercises. On some occasions, if I was supposed to train at my normal time at 3pm and felt particularly tired, I would delay the workout to the evening or push the workout back a day and take the day off. Making these kinds of last minute changes are much more difficult when someone is expecting you to be at the gym at a specific time. For me it boiled down to the fact that I placed greater value on having the freedom to be flexible with my training than having someone there to spot me and give me forced reps. So how does one get forced reps and spots without a training partner?

In my later years, I learned that it is just as easy to get forced reps and spots without a training partner. The trick was to have some go to people at the gym who were competent spotters and who knew how to give proper forced reps. I had a group of 3 to 4 guys in the gym who I could rely on to give me great spots. In the event that one of them was not there I would seek out someone who appeared to be an experienced lifter and ask them for a spot. I would never use a new spotter without giving them a full tutorial on exactly how I wanted them to spot me. I would tell them the signal for lift off, how many reps I expected to get, how many forced reps I was doing, and how fast I wanted the forced reps to be. Most of the time, the person would listen to my instructions and would give me a successful spot. There was however the occasional person who would still spot me incorrectly after going through that entire lesson! As a last resort, If I was scheduled to do forced reps in my workout and there did not seem to be any competent spotters at the gym, I would substitute drop sets (which can be completed without a partner) for the forced reps and would not do any dangerous exercises that required a spotter such as bench press.