Lifting Without a Partner in Bodybuilding

When training with a partner, you and your partner both act as spotters for each other and offer encouragement. Training without a partner is possible, but does pose several risks and can have a negative impact on your training. It's crucial that you consider safety and motivation when training on your own.

  1. Drawbacks When Lifting Without a Partner

    • The main drawback to lifting alone is not having a spotter to assist you on certain exercises. A good spotter should offer encouragement and advice without interfering, advises trainer Nick Nilsson of Critical Bench. Spotters are most useful on bench presses and squats -- two exercises where you lift heavy loads and are at a higher risk of getting pinned under the bar. To get around this when training on your own, stop one or two reps short of failure when bench pressing and always squat in a squat rack or power rack with the safety pins set just below the lowest point of your squat, ready to catch the barbell should you fail.

    Exercise Selection

    • Training on your own may mean you have to switch certain exercises around. Rather than having to cut your sets short when benching, change your main chest exercise to dumbbell presses or dips. This way, if you can't lift the weight, you can simply drop the dumbbells, or put your feet down when dipping. For lower-body exercises, deadlifts don't require the help of a spotter, but you may prefer to perform front squats instead of back squats or even switch to lunges or the leg press.

    Intensity Techniques

    • Training partners are useful for helping with common bodybuilding intensity techniques such as forced reps or slow negatives. When training solo, avoid these techniques and incorporate drop sets and partial reps instead. On a drop set, perform a maximum number of reps, lower the weight by 20 to 30 percent then go to muscular failure again. Partial reps involve hitting failure again, then performing extra mini-reps over just a small range of motion. On the leg extension, for example, you might perform 15 full reps followed by six or seven reps just moving between the midway point and the top of the movement. Neither of these techniques need a spotter.

    Motivation

    • If you don't have a training partner to scream encouragement at you, listen to music to get pumped up. Music can help you push further through fatigue and make you work harder, according to the Idea Fitness Journal. Make a motivational playlist and put your earbuds in while you train. Write down all your workouts in a notebook and take this with you every session. Aim to beat your sets and reps every time you're in the gym. You might not have a partner to compete against, but you can certainly compete against yourself.