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, forced reps can actually serve as sort of drop sets without ever dropping the weight.
Without ever putting the bar back because they're basically unloading the weight for
you.
So, let's say Jesse's bench pressing and you start with 200 pounds and I'm not touching
the bar.
But then we get to your sticking point.
If I don't touch it and I stay away, you're done.
Yeah.
Right?
You can't get to the sticking point.
No, it's going to fall right on top of me.
If you're at that point in the set where you can't make it through your sticking point
anymore.
But if I give you about five or 10% assistance through there and you're able to get through
and perform that and you can do it again, I give you about 10% or 15% assistance, you
can do it again.
You can see that you can start to accrue some volume and high effort, high intensity volume
here by simply having me there to help you through.
Which is going to help in your pursuit of hypertrophy, depending upon how much you use
this technique.
You want to overuse it.
But essentially, without having to drop that way down, you're going in basically doing
the equivalent of a drop set and run the rack with lighter and lighter and lighter weights
except that I'm doing more and more of the work for you.
Even though I have to strip the plates.
Right, until I'm ultimately curling the bar up for you on a bench press.
So that's an effective technique.
But now, if your goal was, let's say, strength, I think becomes a little bit muddier here.
All right.
The water has become a little bit muddier.
There are people that will argue that the spotter at the crucial moment in the lift
that lets you grind doesn't just take the bar away from you that's a crime.
You got to let the person grind.
And when you do that, neurologically, you're allowing somebody to actually fight through
those sticking points and maybe with just a little bit of assistance and allows you
to sort of build that confidence that you can take with you as you build your strength.
But here's why I say it's a caution and here's where the other side of the equation comes
in, where people argue, "Don't touch my freaking bar."
Yeah.
And that is you are ultimately going to be responsible at some point, the rubber is going
to hit the road and you're going to have to lift that weight.
And if you don't have your spotter with you and they've always helped you through your
weak spot, you're only as strong as your weakest link.
You are not going to lift that bar.
And if that's the case, what have you really gained from that, other than you've gotten
stronger and the other range of motion?
So, what I advise in most cases is instead of looking for a spotter to take you through
those areas of the lift that are more difficult for you, think of other ways that you can
improve your ability to perform that lift its strength is your goal.
Think about what accessory exercises you can perform.
I think about what other mechanisms you could use.
Could you employ chains on the bench press, let's say, to allow you to get through that
point and build your strength at the same time without somebody interfering with your
lift?
Right.
What are some of the other things that you can do in your technique?
Can you learn how to tighten up better?
Can you learn how to get your shoulders back so that your chest the shoulders are pushing
together more efficiently out of the bottom of that press.
There are techniques, there are other methods you can use that will allow you to get through
this without anybody ever having to jump in and touch that bar.
And therefore, in Albert's case, I understand what he's talking about.
He's old school.
But again, Albert, I would say to answer your question, you could be being a little bit
too stubborn.
Again, not knowing what your current goal is right now, there are instances where it
could matter.
And, of course, that comes down to goal, load and experience there are factors of all those
things that ultimately matter.
Albert, thank you for your question.
Guys, if you have your question that you want answered, make sure you leave it below.
That's what these Ask Jeff videos are about.
In the meantime if you're looking for programs where we put the science back in strength
and lay out what you have to do day by day, step by step, it's all over at athleanx.com.
In the meantime, if you have not done so, guys, make sure you click subscribe, turn
on your notifications so you never miss a new video when we put one out.
All right guys see you soon.
I'm a great spotter by the way.
Oh, get out of here.