I’ve been back home working out in my old gym for a couple months now and I’ve really begun to appreciate the importance of a lifting partner, or at least someone in the gym who knows what they’re doing when it comes to spotting.

One of the biggest changes when working out at home is that I can’t necessarily do the same workouts that I had been doing up at school. For example, Nash and I would do the 5×5 workout and mix it with a push/pull approach. Essentially what this meant was that we needed two separate exercises free for our use at all times so he and I could be constantly rotating, and that on some of the freeweight exercises (bench especially) we would need at least a lift off and usually a spotter. With no lifting partner at home, it becomes much more difficult to run back and forth between exercises, as there is no one to save the machine for you, and it’s just a huge pain in the ass to have to ask for a spot five separate times on JUST ONE EXERCISE!

So that’s the first issue, it’s simply much more convenient to have a lifting partner. There’s also the aspect of having someone around who knows your lifting habits and preferences, such as what kinds of lift offs you like and just when you actually need help. There are at least three spotter related issues that I’ve encountered in the past couple of months alone.

First off is when someone either doesn’t give you a nearly big enough lift, or they give you a poor form lift. I would much rather have too big of a lift than too small of one. A small lift forces you to exert too much energy and possibly hurt yourself trying to get the weight into position, which just screws up the set and doesn’t give you a totally accurate sense of how well you did.

The second issue is when people decide to help you on every rep. The point of working out is to push yourself, not have someone help you lift on every single rep so you won’t break a sweat. I understand that people err on the side of caution, and it’s not a bad idea to do so when working out, but let me at least struggle a little bit before you jump in.

Finally, I was benching pretty close to my max so I gave my spotter specific instructions. I told him I wanted to get one on my own, I would probably need help with the second rep and then I wanted to do a negative. He said he knew what a negative was, and I’ll take the balme for not making sure he knew what I wanted, but sure enough on my negative rep, the bar’s coming down, down, down, I got no chance of getting it back up and there he is waiting for me to tell him to help me get it back up. I have close to 300lbs sitting on my chest and he’s waiting for me to pop it back up like it’s nothing. No harm done in the end, but still, I would have appreciated someone who knew what was going on.

There are many more reasons to work out with a friend or to find someone in the gym who’s willing to help you out, these are just a few things I’ve noticed since I’ve been working out on my own again.