Training partners
31 October 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
It is tough to improve living in a vacuum: you have no frame of reference. Weight trainers past a certain level eventually seek out others lifters in order to jointly pursue the craft of iron pumping. Universally and eternally, the super serious gather together and help one another in a communal setting. A training partner or a group of training partners can create a physical synergy wherein progress is accelerated rapidly and radically. Ideally you find someone who ascribes to the same free-weight, Old School-style we champion, and ideally the partner(s) are stronger than you. This will cause you to pick up your game in order to hang: at that is a good thing. You think 300-pounds is heavy until you train around guys who regularly handle 500. You might have mental barriers about a particular poundage but train with guys who routinely use that weight for reps and suddenly your own psychological barriers melt. Ive seen it happen a dozen times with a dozen different sets of partners in a dozen different geographic regions and in a dozen eras. Get a good group together, get them all moving in the same direction doing the same workout and watch as human nature, natural competitive instincts, peer pressure and genuine camaraderie combine to create a group dynamic that causes all the participants to progress far faster than if theyd pursued their goals individually. 99.9% of the time it is impossible to progress as rapidly alone as you can with training partners. Partners provide spotting, encouragement and eyes with which to watch you with undivided attention. Naturally you will desire to perform really well in front of these peers and friends. It is doubtful any individual on his or her own would possess the mental drive necessary to push them selves as hard as they could within a group.
The smart trainee knows that gains lie in the new and uncharted territory. The big spectacular gains are where youve not been. To trigger gains you have to equal or exceed limits in some manner or fashion. Thats a lot easier when you have partners loading, spotting, paying attention to you and encouraging you. Working with a group of guys (or girls) particularly if they are better than you is a surefire way to bust through to the next level. Training partners accelerate progress and this phenomenon is not restricted to the athletic elite. I work with a group of five untrained individuals with zero prior weight training experience. No one knew one another before and after 30-days theyve all become fast friends. Without prompting, coaxing or coaching, I let the group dynamic shape itself. Each of the five individuals has taken a genuine interest in the progress of their stable mates. They care about their partners progress and this manifest itself in many ways: they dont talk when not lifting instead they help load the poundage for the next person in the rotation and then spot each other. They root each other on. When its their turn they get fired up and extend themselves in ways they didnt know possible. Its my job to keep them safe and I do this by making sure they abide by the technical parameters of the lifts. We only do three: squat, bench press, deadlift. If they start to contort, twist, jerk or yank the poundage I curtail the set immediately. We use the Purposefully Primitive philosophy of creeping incrementalism, i.e., we take tiny poundage jumps or slight rep increases. We go for the compound interest of the long haul. We string workouts together like pearls on a strand and take the long view.
A good case could be made that the biggest single success factor for this group has been the group dynamic. The savvy trainee new to a training group need exercise restraint and slow-walk the process. Huge jumps can be made early on, particularly in a group setting, but the smart money is on taking small poundage or rep jumps for a protracted period of time. Simultaneously construct a firm technical foundation. Poundage comes with time. A sloppy technical foundation and an overly ambitious game plan is a recipe for disaster in the form of injury. As Purposeful Primitives, we do fewer things better. In my training group of untrained beginners, we purposefully limit our exercises to three and train three times a week. My beginners are getting real good at squats, bench presses and deadlifts. They get a lot of practice and I watch them like a hawk. We fine-tuning techniques and increase the resistance: barely, imperceptibly, negligibly. After four weeks, a woman who struggled with 45-pounds for three reps in the deadlift blasted up 110×10 this past Thursday; a man who had an awkward time completing a 95-pound deadlift on day one deadlifted 225×7 yesterday using great technique. In each and every instance the vast improvement can be assigned, in large part, to the group dynamic. If you are treading water, consider posting an ad on the bulletin board of the fitness facility where you train. On it put you height, weight, age and indicate that you are looking for a training partner or partners. Post the hours and days you are available.
Be picky and dont throw in with the first gomer who answers the ad. Tell them that you are looking for someone with a similar training philosophy and ask questions: you do not want to throw in with some Jim Jones/David Koresh weight training messiah (every gym has one or two) who will attempt to dominate you and contort your training philosophy into his/hers. You get it from me and you get the best. Dont buy into the weirdo training philosophy of some egomaniac with his baseball hat on backwards and his street name written in giant magic marker letters on the back of his ridiculously oversized weight belt. (If he wears the belt outside the gym, run!) If you can find a partner or two who can make it at the same times you can, someone you can agree to do the same lifts with (squat and bench for sure if they dont want to do these then take a pass) and someone who can push you, be ready to make the gains of your life! Another terrific advantage of working with a group: you will be far less likely to blow off a workout if you have others waiting on you, depending on you. As a side note, I will tell you that the most enduring friendships of my life have been with training partners of years gone by. When you spend hours and hours together, week after week, year after year, working towards a common goal, a kinship builds that often lasts a lifetime.
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