Buddy Training

There’s basically two kinds of bodybuilders in the world: those who train with a partner and those who don’t. Now, they say that in any community, it is the few who do the really crucial work, and it’s usually this type that goes at it alone. I guess bodybuilding isn’t so different. While most of us seem to find training partners, we still have our fair share of characters that just do a bit better up on the high lonesome. For them, the concept of a training partner is impossible.

Take Billy, for example. He was a staple at Gold’s in the early ‘80s. He ran about six-foot-two, 290, covered in tats, veins, and cuts. Billy trained like a solitary fiend inside a six-foot boundary no sane man would dare cross. Never was there ever a guy so deep in the hole; you had make an appointment with him just to get him to look at you. Whatever was eating Billy, though, it had a big appetite. And it gnawed on him and gnawed on him until one sunny spring morning he rode his Harley off Topanga Canyon and into the next world. None of us knew why because we didn’t know the demon Billy did. It must have been a pretty tough one, though; he built a 290-pound block of muscle to fight it, and lost. A guy like Billy isn’t the guy you go up to on your first day in the gym and ask to train with him. That’s not to say gym partnerships can’t be forged; of course they can. You just have to get to know your prospects.

But, before you do that, you have to be sure you’re the kind of guy who’s going to get along with another human being for two hours a day five or six days a week. It takes a while—weeks, if not months—to get to know your training partner well enough to take your training deep into the next level. It’s a big investment in time and energy to arrive at the point where you guys click. Maybe you never will. It’s always a gamble, but you need to be honest with yourself: The training partner relationship is give and take. If your idea of a good time is soloing the Nose route on El Capitan and spending four nights on a porta-ledge dangling in space 1,500 feet up off the deck all by yourself, then you’re probably the introverted, self absorbed type that’s never going to be much help to anyone, especially during a drop set. You have to consider the other person in this partnership. You have to ask yourself, “Will I be a good training partner?”

With that out of the way, the kind of training you do is also a consideration in whether or not you really need a training partner. If you train HIT and like to do lots of drop sets, negatives, forced reps, etc., then you are completely training partner dependent. It’s an absolute necessity—you have no choice but to find yourself a training partner if you plan on getting any work done. If your training is more volume-oriented with lots of circuits and supersets and giant sets, you could get away with staying on your own. This is a big decision because such partnerships are actually relationships and have to be respected as such. Both sides eventually become dependent on the other. You can’t just up and quit one day and leave the other guy hanging. You wouldn’t do that to your dog, and you can’t do that to a training partner. So, be absolutely sure you need and want a training partner before you go looking for one.

Okay, so who’s going to be your training partner? If you’re serious, it’s going to be another dude. That’s not to say that girls can’t make great training partners. Lord knows I’ve had a few over the years, but it’s never an equitable mix. The benefit always seems to favour the girl. And as it should. But, if you’re a decently strong guy and you’re looking to do some serious work, you need another dude. As I said, it’s not an absolute. If you’re okay with Hillary being president, you can probably train with a girl.

What I’ll call “strength equity” is another important factor in choosing who to court as your training partner. When I was stumbling around the gym in my teens, I came across the two hardest brothers I’d ever seen in my life, straight off the yard. They were both over six feet tall and easily to the right of 250, throwing weights around I could barely pronounce. I’d watch them train every day and wished I could do what they did, look how they did. They were in full-time beast mode—old-school beast mode, the real one, not the beast mode on Facebook. So, one day I got up the nerve to go up to them and start some small talk. They were both nice enough. Turns out they knew my father (because they worked in the same hospital) and saw me in the gym every day throwing down. One thing lead to another, and I asked what they were training and asked if I could jump in. That was fine with them, except for this one caveat: “We ain’t gonna lower the weight.” Well, that was a deal-breaker right there considering I couldn’t do one rep of any weight they used! I guess it was a nice way of saying, “Beat it, kid.”

The point is, if you’re going to be scoping out the gym for potential training partners, don’t focus on someone that’s way out of your league. While it sounds practical to hook up with the biggest, strongest guy in the gym, that’s a very selfish endeavor. You’re basically assuming that the biggest, strongest dude in the gym wants to take on a project—you. That’s mighty presumptuous. Look for a guy of your size and strength. It not only equals the playing field but also keeps you from endlessly loading and unloading plates, moving dumbbells around and changing the weight, the seat height, and whatever else. The less fiddling around with equipment you have to do, the better the workout.

Okay, so now let’s say you’ve scoped out a couple of prospects based on their apparent strength and the fact that you guys seem to be training at the same time of day. There’s a few more things to consider before you go over and say, “What’s up?” These may sound silly, but, trust me, they’re things that can drive you insane. First, does he wear the same sweat-soaked, ratty sweatshirt every day that has flies buzzing around the green cloud emanating from it? Chances are if he does, you’re not going to want him getting close enough to you to spot you. Personal hygiene is a really important issue in choosing a training partner. If your training partner stinks, so too will your workout.

Punctuality is another pet peeve for many people. Especially in this day and age of hand-grenade pre-workouts, the last thing anyone wants to do is mill around waiting to train while the top of his head feels ready to blow off. Even just 15 minutes late and a jacked-up training partner can lose it. I can’t tell you how many fights I’ve seen between training partners. And it’s always over the same two things: a girl or being late.

Legs are another important consideration. A lot of guys these days don’t train legs. It’s a phenomenon I see at my gym all the time—floating torsos. They train their upper body twice a week and never hit legs. They wear long shorts or warm-up pants to hide it, but the fact remains, if you’re into building a complete physique, you can’t hook up with a partner who only trains half his body. Make sure they train legs, including calves.

Also observe their work ethic. Do they train as hard as you? Do they rest too long between sets? Do they scream too much? Sweat all over the place? Do they do whack exercises? Is their form something you’ll tolerate? Are they prepared with the all the crap they need—belt, straps, wraps, chalk—and not running around asking people to borrow stuff. Basically pay attention to them and ask yourself, does this look like the kind of person who would annoy me? But, be careful here. You want them to annoy you a little. If you’re going to have any kind of serious, hardcore workouts worthy of bringing in a training partner, then you’re going to have to be mean to each other at some point. It helps if there’s something about them that pisses you off to help motivate the cruelty you’ll need to inflict if you guys ever set off to find the true meaning of “failure.” Just remember, though, it’s going to come back to you. If you’re truly one of us, that’s exactly why you want a training partner. This relationship isn’t intended to be at the utmost pleasant. As Leroy Davis would say to his training partner, Dorian Yates, “It’s time to get nah-sty.”

Now that you’re done stalking, it’s time to go ahead and introduce yourself. Don’t just come right out and solicit a training partner. You have to be buddies first. A little small talk every time you see each other, and before you know it, an opportunity will present itself and you guys will fall in. Once you start talking nuts and bolts about training, make sure you cover a few more topics.

Specifically, you guys need to agree that the purpose of this union is to further your goals in the gym. You need to talk about how you like to be spotted, where you like the help to come in, how much help, whether you guys train HIT or HVT or a combo, etc. What are your specific goals? Are you competing? And of course, most of these issues and more get sorted once you two finally cinch up lifting belts and get to work.

If you’re the kind of person who works and plays well with others, having a good training partner will become an invaluable part of your bodybuilding quest. Just knowing you have someone there is motivating. I can’t count how many times I’ve been ready to pack it in and my training partner got me to keep going. Even just showing up to the gym becomes more essential if you know your partner is waiting on you. While it’s inevitable that training partners will come and go, for the time you have one, and if they’re a good one, you’ll never make more gains without them.

The Horrible Training Partner

Kalvin Richardson had just gotten off a two-year stretch at Lompoc for passing bad checks. He was a good-sized fella, probably five ten at an even 225. The hefty Midwest corn-fed Jethro type; moving heavy stuff around was second nature to him. Unfortunately, the weights are gone from the federal pens, so the first thing Kalvin did when he got out was get back to the gym. Doing so created the second thing Kalvin had to do: find a training partner. But that wasn’t going to be so easy. And I’ll tell you why … Kalvin only has one sweatshirt and he wears it every day to the gym. For all we know, he never takes it off. Needless to say, if you wanted to grow mushrooms, Kalvin’s sweatshirt would provide a great base. Apart from his onerous stench, Kalvin loves his Beats by Dre, and his head is always clamped between them with the metal blaring. He can’t hear a thing, let alone anyone he’s training with. Now, before Kalvin did time, he was a horndog’s horndog. Now, after a two-year drought, it was everything he could do to keep the little head from popping out of his waistband and start telling him what to do. A poodle with a pink bow on its head would cause him to look away, so imagine a hottie in yoga shorts with a big rack straining against a sweat-soaked sports bra. Not a good thing when you’re shooting for a PR on the bench. Kalvin would get a whiff of something sweet and the next thing you know, your Adam’s apple is a pancake.

For a great article about training by yourself instead of having a partner, click here!