I would love a training partner - if they were committed, had similar goals, strength, training time...etc! Unfortunately like a few of you said- it seems to be more partners you end up feeling like their personal trainer and trying to train yourself at the same time. That can slow you down and hold you back a bit. I have only trained with a few friends(guys) on random occasion that actually helped to push me for drop sets, failure sets, and spotting. So, I typically prefer training alone since the later is much harder to come by- especially girls.
What sometimes works for my wife an I is is we do our own strength lifting and then do a conditioning wod together. Last night for instance we did a little 12 minute EMOTM. 20 double unders and max effort squat cleans every minute on the minute. It's a a really nice way to push each other through conditioning. But when it's just strength training, a squat session could take me an hour and she's done in like 25 minutes so she may do accessory work while I finish before we do conditioning together.
I workout alone, but I can see both sides. If I found someone locally who I got along with reasonably well and had similar goals and motivation - of course that could be great. But that person is a unicorn. The closest I ever got was a buddy in high school. We really pushed each other and knew how to spot each other to get the person under the weight to push just a little harder. But he was very inconsistent and it was hard to get him to be reliable.
Working out alone is great, but sometimes it would be good to have someone for forced reps or just to yell at you when you are slacking a little.
where 2 subscribe to nasty email service?
-asking for a spineless jellyfish....
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