Can You “Spot” the Problem?

Did you ever wonder whether using a spot when lifting would have gotten you more gains in the long run than having not used one? If so, then this video is for you. Here I’m answering a common question of whether or not spotting helps to make gains or hurts muscle and strength gains over time.

Good, good. One more, one more, bro, you got this, you got this one more. Oh, oh, okay. Bro that’s two. Dude, I have like five left, what are you doing?

Bro, it looked like you needed help. All right, push, push, push, push. You got, bro. You got it. You got to tell you, it’s all you, bro.

Just push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push, push. You got it. Oh, Jesus. All right bro, let’s take these weights for a tour around Disney World, let’s go take a spin up and down the roller coaster. Make those weights, pay your mortgage.

You got taxes, these weights are paying them, baby. Come on, come on fuck that weight right in the ass. I think I’m good man, I think I’m good. You sure? Don’t ever put your balls in my face like that again.

Do you want to tell how many times you had to shoot that? Actually, I don’t want to talk about that video ever again. That’s fair. Never, never. What’s up, guys?

Jeff Cavalier, athleanx. com. Jesse Lacio, athleanx. com. Today though, we are going to talk about spotting.

And, you know, it’s not necessarily as cut and dry as some people make it out to be. And we’re going to do it in the form of an Ask Jeff, question. That’s right. In this series, if you want a question of yours, answer, you leave a comment below. Jesse cCombs through them, he picks the ones that he wants to cover and then we go.

And that brings us to today’s question from Albert Hansen. Jeff, what’s your opinion on spotting? I’m a bit of an old school guy, and I tend to never want anyone to touch my bar when I’m lifting. But am I being too stubborn for my own good? Thanks for all you do.

You’re a national treasure. Wow. A national treasure. Albert, thank you very much. If you’re a national treasure, what the hell does that make me?

Soon to be fired. Please don’t joke about that ever again. So, Albert, thank you for your question. So, let’s talk about that, because this actually brings to light some of the things that I talk about when it comes to spotting. I’m guessing that Albert is probably pretty experienced, okay, because he’s talking about kind of old school, he doesn’t want anybody touching his bar, and I respect that because that’s the old school approach.

But is that necessarily warranted all the time? Well, if we go to the other end of the spectrum, the beginner’s side of experience, right? I actually have a very firm stance when it comes to that. I don’t believe that beginners should be employing spotters for anything other than safety and potentially on a bench, a lift off to get to a position on a bench. But they should not be touching your lift in the midst of your lift.

And there’s a big reason for that. If you’re a beginner, you have to learn how to command your own body in space before you could even start to command your own body holding an implement in space, let alone letting someone else move that implement for you. I mean, listen, we’ve all seen the guy who rushes over to the bench press. Meanwhile, they can’t perform a proper pushup. They lack the body mechanics and the awareness to do it properly.

You start to add load to that body, things start to go wrong. And that’s oftentimes why I’ll start beginners on body weight strength training programs to learn how to command your body three dimensionally in space because it matters. And when I say beginners, I’m not just saying teenagers here, guys. I’m talking about we can have beginners in their forties who’ve never touched a weight before and are equally inept at handling their own body in space, let alone handling a bar and their body in space so I discourage that. Now, there’s a difference between having someone there for some of these other intangibles on a cover in a second.

But I’m talking about interfering with your progression of the bar from the bottom to the top or whatever exercise you’re doing, a lap pulldown even if we see them spotting everything. The thing that I would say, though, is there’s one thing that’s actually worse than a beginner that’s always having someone spot them. Oh, I know this one. What? A bad spot.

Bad Spot Barry. Yes, Bad Spot Barry. Just like you, right? A bad spotter can be extremely dangerous. It takes a lift that could maybe become ineffective with the spot and it can make it downright dangerous.

And that’s not limited to beginners. You can see even in a case like Chris Duffin here, who’s a friend of mine, this is a spot I’m not saying it was done on purpose or even that the guy’s a bad spotter, he just had a bad moment. Yeah. And that caused a very ugly situation. Chris was going for a double, the guy thought he was going for a single, he tried to wreck the bar, it caused a disaster as you can see.

Chris was very upset, and I think that’s the last guy I want to upset. You can see that becomes a very dangerous situation. But when we talk about the benefits of spotting, well, there’s a lot of them. And we don’t have to look too far in the past to see even the incident that happened with Ryan Crowley— Oh man. — that having spotters there took a bad, ugly situation and saved it from being much worse, potentially even critical.

Because if he didn’t have those two guys on the ends of the bar and by the way, I don’t forget about you on the left of the bar over there, because a lot of times you don’t get credit. You had super spotter Larry Wheels at the top there holding the bar. And by the way, if I ever needed a spotter to save my life, he’s the guy I want. Me too. But the guys on the left there, they both did a job to save that ugly situation.

Safety in the assurance of safety is a big thing that can be gained when the load is especially high like that. A motivator. It’s good to have a motivator. You know, if you’re spotters there to push you, not necessarily to say the things you were saying there, Bad Spot Barry. I don’t know if I care about anybody paying my taxes and I certainly don’t care if any whatever, I won’t get into that.

Fuck that weight right in the ass! I think I’m good man, I think I’m good. You sure? But saying the right things at the right time could actually encourage you to get the job done. Reassurance.

There’s nothing like the reassurance of knowing that somebody’s there to help you if needed. And that sometimes psychologically triggers someone to do a lot more in the gym than they’re capable of. When they’re wiggling their fingers under the bar on the bench press, they’re not touching it because they shouldn’t touch it. But they’re basically wiggling then there, you know that they’re there if you need it. Somehow, that bar sort of moves a little bit easier than it does when you know there’s nobody behind you.

And that’s a big psychological edge that a lot of times helps you to get better results from your training. And then, of course, we have some of the actual things that happen in a lift itself where I think spotters are warranted. Let’s talk about that bench press the actual liftoff. We all know that the most important part of the bench press is not the liftoff. As a matter of fact, biomechanically, we know that’s the most inefficient part of the lift.

We’re putting our arms back behind our body, not in line with our forms, with our elbows. That’s the most vulnerable in terms of putting our shoulders into a bad position. Yeah. Let someone lift that off for you, but then you’ve got to take care of the lift from there. Now, we got to talk about the goals.

So what is your goal? Because if hypertrophy is your goal of training, then you need to understand that a spotter can actually provide something very valuable to you, and that is they can help you to do forced reps. Now, forc