1. Home
  2. »
  3. Fitness
  4. »
  5. Benefits of Working Out with a Friend
Working Out with Friend

Benefits of Working Out with a Friend

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
Facebook

Are you looking to get fit quickly? You might be considering what you can do to make your workouts more effective and to achieve greater gains in weight loss, muscle tone, and muscle development in a shorter amount of time.

What you may not have considered is that working out with a friend can help you achieve those gains faster. It can help you reach your goals sooner and stay motivated.

Let’s talk about some of the benefits of working out with a friend and why so many people partner up for their exercise sessions.

Having A Workout Partner Is Safer

One of the best reasons to work out with a buddy is because they can look out for you if something happens to you while you are exercising. If you slip and fall, they can help you back up. If you have poor health and exercise puts a strain on your body, your friend can call for medical assistance if it’s required.

Your friend can help spot you while you do weightlifting, getting you out of a tough situation if the weights overpower you. There are so many potential risks when exercising, but don’t let those risks dissuade you.

Exercising is essential for developing muscles and staying in shape. Why not minimize risk by having a partner with you so that if something happens to you, you can get help fast?

You can do the same for your partner, looking out for their health and safety and helping them out of a tight spot. An injury can take you out of your exercise routine pretty quickly, and you may need days or even weeks to recover from an exercise injury. It makes sense then to work out with a friend.

Does Having A Workout Buddy Make You More Motivated?

Did you know that if you work out with a buddy, you’re more likely to finish your weight loss program? The benefits of working out with a friend statistics show that people who work out with a partner are 95% likely to complete their workout program or achieve their weight loss goals.

Compare that to people who are working out alone, which statistics show are only about 76% likely to complete their program.

This comes down to motivation. If someone is watching you work out and working out with you, you will feel stronger and more motivated.

That’s how it works for most people, and part of that is simply that your friend can act as an accountability partner. When you tell each other what your goals are for fitness and weight loss, and you work out together, you’re less likely to give up on those goals.

You feel accountable not just to yourself and the promises you made but also to the person who’s working out with you or who you told about your goals. It’s an extra layer of accountability that adds an extra layer of motivation.

If you find that you start but don’t finish exercise programs, you can partner up to make sure you complete this one. You’re more effective with a partner and much more likely to accomplish what you set out to do.

They may not be physically helping you work out most of the time, but the emotional support you get can be a huge boost.

Having a Workout Buddy Helps Improve Your Form

Your friend can help you in other ways. It can be difficult to tell if you’re doing exercises properly and if your form is correct. In a gym, you may have the benefit of a trainer or mirrors to tell you if your position is off.

You probably wouldn’t have that at home. Even working out in the gym, it can be helpful to have a partner to check your form and make sure you’re doing things properly. Having that second set of eyes on you can help you make better judgement calls and improve your exercise form.

The form is important, because there are a lot of exercises that if you’re not doing them with the right form, they won’t be very effective at all. This is true of planks, pushups, pull-ups, and many more.

There are also exercises that if you do them improperly with poor form, you could end up injuring yourself. Weightlifting definitely comes to mind here. If you are lying on a bench lifting weights over your head with the wrong form, you could strain yourself and suffer injury.

Your friend could help you spot your running form as well to see it is correct or not. Having the right running form helps you to run farther, feel less tired, and get more out of your run. It also helps you to have better posture.

A lot of exercises rely on proper form to help improve your posture, even the posture you have when you’re not exercising. If you have the wrong form, though, you can actually damage your posture and your ability to stand or sit straight. That’s why it’s so important to have a partner to check your form as you work out.

Workouts With Friends Are More Fun

What else can your friend do for you? You might not have considered the social benefits of working out with a friend. Exercising can be a lonely business, and you can feel like you’re doing it on your own many times, if you don’t have a partner.

You might feel bored and give up on the workouts because they’re not interesting to you and there’s nothing to do while you’re working out.

This ties into what we said earlier about getting through your workout session and your workout program by having a buddy. If you have someone to work out with, that means that you have someone to talk to.

This can make the exercise session go by so much faster. While some people prefer to listen to music or watch television while they work out, it could be much more rewarding to talk to a friend while you’re exercising.

What happens a lot of time with people who spend much of their week working out is that they can withdraw from society. They stick their headphones in and work out on their own and end up having trouble socializing after months of this alone time.

This is true even if they’re surrounded by other people at the gym or if they’re running on a track. They just cut off from the world and get into their own little zone as they exercise.

For some people, that’s not a problem, but for others it can really hurt their socialization skills, especially if they are doing this for many months or even years. There are definite social benefits to working out with a friend.

That helps to improve the bond between the two of you and it helps to improve your social skills. Your ability to interact with other people will grow as you spend time working out with a friend.

Have you considered bringing a partner to the gym or to your home to work out with you? Have you thought about getting a running buddy or a cycling buddy when you go to exercise? There are so many benefits to working out with a friend that we only had space to cover a few of them here. Once you try to get through your workout program with a friend, you’ll see even more benefits for yourself.

Stretches to do Before Squats
Fitness
Ellis Francis

Best Stretches to do Before Squats

Stretches before squats are essential for achieving optimal performance and preventing injuries during your workout. Squats, being a compound exercise, involve multiple muscle groups such

Read More »
ThighMaster
Fitness
Ellis Francis

Exercises with ThighMaster

Exercises with the Thigh Master have been popular since the 1990s, when Suzanne Somers introduced the ThighMaster Toning System. This versatile fitness tool has endured

Read More »