Today was a unique experience in my boxing training regime. The session was based on partner workouts featuring none other than my wife. Each exercise was designed to play off the other partner’s movements—whether in-sync or complimentary.
Aside from being fun, I found the session to be quite educational… and motivational.
At its core, personal training is helpful because it’s structured to provide procedural guidance and emotional accountability—both important in different ways. Guidance is likely the most obvious benefit, supplying insight on proper form as well as an invaluable outside-view critique. Accountability, for me, is the most valuable attribute but masquerades itself a bit as it’s less tangible. See, I have found it a lot harder to talk myself out of giving my all when there is a trainer monitoring and supporting my efforts. Although their role is to bark orders and mine is to take orders, I have always looked at it as a partnership and, as in any good partnership, both sides need to hold up their end of the deal. Letting down the trainer is letting down the team and that’s just not an option.
When you’re doing partner training, the stakes elevate. In the same spirit of partnership demonstrated by the trainer/trainee relationship, partners working out in this manner are really in it together. Both running the plays outlined by the coach but working as a team to tackle the challenge. This is where a new kind of motivation is introduced. In this relationship, a personal fail directly results in a team fail and, for me, that can be the ultimate motivation.
If I’m holding a :90 second wall squat while she is performing sit-ups at a cadence dictated by the passing of a weighted medicine ball, allowing my fatigued legs to succumb to the discomfort means the end of her workout. When the roles change and I’m the one performing the sit-ups, I would expect her to stay strong—and that’s all the motivation I need to stay focused, work through the pain and hold up my end of this workout relationship.
Want to stir up your workouts? Grab a partner, try some of the moves we did from the video above, and crush it—if not for yourself, do it for your partner.