The benefits of having a training partner
I have been doing my weight training sessions by myself for the past few months, and while I enjoy it for the most part, I can see the benefits of training with a partner. When I was younger, during my teenage years to be precise, I used to workout with my older brother. We were both obsessed with weights, and every afternoon after school, we’d hit the gym – in this case, our parents double garage which had our weights and bench in it.
We used to put the stereo on, spend a bit of time arguing over what music to listen to, then get on with our routines. Doing this training together meant that between each set, you were spotting for the other person, and you also had someone to help with changing the weights over on the barbell or dumbbells.
The best part of having someone to spot you when you were doing your sets was that you could instruct them to help you reach a specified number of reps. So if you wanted to bang out a set of ten, your training partner would be able to help with counting the reps, and if you got to eight and needed some help with pushing out the last two reps, they would be there to do this.
Next week I will be having a training session with Dan, who also posts on this blog. The idea being that we can occasionally meet up and have a workout together and give each other a boost in our training. It would be great if we could train together every session, especially as Dan is bigger than me, so my competitive side would come out and I’d benefit greatly from training with him.
3 Responses to “The benefits of having a training partner”
March 3rd, 2009 saat: 1:08 pm
I’m looking forward to our training session too! I train alone as well whereas I used to train with friends when I was younger. I agree that the ‘right’ training partner can push you farther and motivate you to succeed and achieve your aims. However, a lazy partner can detract from your sessions too. I recently had a guy from work come up with me but he was more interested in talking about I.T. and cycling than getting down with the weights! Luckily he has now given up.
I also know that a big thing that can go wrong with a training partner is EGO! I used to cheat on my reps so much just to outdo my mate and vice-versa. I know better now but just worth keeping in mind.
Anyway, I’d better go an have a protein shake as I can’t let Tristan get stronger and bigger than me! It’s purely because of his gyming that I have got back into it again so well done to him.
March 4th, 2009 saat: 4:08 pm
Hi,
Just found the blog on Google. Love it so far…I had to comment because I have so much trouble finding a good partner. Now I almost don’t like having a partner because the “perfect partner” doesn’t seem to exist for me. I have gone through about a half a dozen partners who have all approached me and then lasted maybe a week. I definitely noticed a decrease in my workout effectiveness. Now it’s just me and my ipod :)
March 5th, 2009 saat: 3:46 pm
Carlos, glad you like the blog, and thanks for reading and commenting.
I think with anything in life, you can’t just go along with someone in the hope that it will work out all right in the end, it rarely does…
I think you can only find the right partner if you both have the same goals and are willing to leave your ego at the door. I think this is why I enjoyed training so much with my brother when we were younger, we both had the same goal and most of the time left our ego at the door.
I’m looking forward to training with Dan next week, we’ll be leaving our ego at the door and hopefully our goals are the same!
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