How To Be A Good Weight Lifting Spotter

How To Be A Good Weight Lifting Spotter

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There are spotters all over the world in any gym but nowhere is it written on how to spot correctly so we will cover a few of the basics that you may or may not find obvious. Probably the first and most important thing about spotting someone is to ask if they want to be spotted through a set.

The next most important thing that you need to ask the person for whom you are going to spot is what they are shooting for. For example when someone is trying to do a set of ten reps and you start pushing the barbell up on rep number 5 then you will be ruining the set for them.

You should never take the weight completely away from the person doing the set and always maintain the tension in the muscles. You should always first ask the person for whom you are going to spot for if they are doing any special technique like doing negatives, drop sets, or forced reps, etc.

It is also a good idea to ask if they would like help lifting the barbell off the rack in bench-press for example. When spotting someone doing squats you need to go down with them and NEVER push them forward onto the rack in front of them.

When spotting for someone who is doing a dumbell bench press make sure that you are not pushing the elbows inward as this may just cause a cave in on the chest. Obviously there are certain exercises where you cannot spot for someone, like when doing deadlifts, hyperextensions, and others like crunches, power cleans, etc.

When spotting someone and they are training with a machine like a pec deck, it is always much better to spot them by helping to lift the weight stack and not their elbows or hands. The last point on spotting concerns your own personal requirements when it comes to spotting.
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f you are the kind of person who needs a spotter when you do every set then you are either working far too hard or you are not working hard enough. Doing too many forced reps will only get you to reach over-training on the other hand getting your spotter to do all the work will also put a stop to your progress.

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