Trying to find the perfect workout partner — one who keeps you motivated, even when you can barely bench 100 pounds — can feel a lot like looking for a beefy needle in a sweat-drenched haystack. And like any relationship, even when you think you found the one, the squat to your deadlift, they could very well pack their gym bags and leave you and your swole bod for another even swoler bod — something that one young broski recently found out the hard way:
my boyfriend’s gym “bro dude” broke up with him ??? pic.twitter.com/mk3yiOtCqv
— S K Y L E R ✨ (@arielle_skyler) February 8, 2019
The heartbreak!
While there’s no guarantee that any gym buddy is forever, with some advice from Jonathan Jordan, an award-winning trainer at Equinox Fitness, you can at least know what to look for.
Similar Goals
“More important than picking someone with your same body type, you need to agree on the same goals,” Jordan explains. “For instance, pairing one person who wants to go lean, get shredded and lose body fat with a person who wants to gain weight and bulk up won’t work well. But I’ve seen 110-pound females and 225-pounds males make great buddies so long as they aim for the same goal (or program).”
Similar Abilities
“If one person wants to workout their legs with heavy weights, but the other has a torn ACL or knee arthritis, it might not work,” Jordan explains. “Finding someone with similar capacities and/or general health can be important so that one person doesn’t get hurt or slow the other down.”
Similar Schedules
“A morning person rarely has success working out in the evening, and an evening person usually struggles to become a morning person,” Jordan says. “It’s not impossible, but it does require fighting our genetic preferences. Save yourself some stress and find a buddy with a similar schedule and commitment level.”
Sounds good! But, uh, how do I actually find this totally amazing person? “The easiest way to find a gym buddy these days is Facebook,” Jordan says, before sending me a screenshot of a recent post that helped his friend — and fellow trainer — find a totally cool bro-dude:
“It’s probably best to do something like this, as opposed to accosting someone directly,” Jordan continues. “Texting, emailing and contacting someone through social media allows them the chance to gather their thoughts, and politely decline if they prefer to go solo. Also, don’t be offended if you’re told no — many of us find our workouts sacred, since they’re the only hours (or days) when we don’t have to engage with others.”
That makes sense. So… anyone out there smoke weed while attempting (and often failing) to ride their exercise bike once a month? If so, hit me up!
Ian Lecklitner
Ian Lecklitner is a staff writer at MEL Magazine. He mostly writes about everyone's favorite things: Sex, drugs and food.
