I’ve been working out for a bunch of years now, and for pretty much all of that time the exercise at the heart of my chest workout has been the bench press. This shouldn’t come as a shock at anyone. After all, the bench press is the agreed upon king of chest exercises.

What also shouldn’t come as a shock is the fact that the exercise most commonly requiring a spotter also happens to be bench press. The reason why is obvious. It’s sort of the only exercise where, if you can’t finish a rep, you just might drop the bar on your head/neck/chest and ya know, die.

I’ve also never had an actual full time (or even part time) “workout partner.”

If you combine the 3 facts above you should come to the realization that I, like many people, have been forced to have complete strangers at the gym act as my bench press spotter.

It should also go without saying that this has lead to many… what’s the best way to put this… I know… interesting situations.

I thought it would be fun to relive some of these “interesting” bench press situations with you, and I figured what better way to start it off than with the official #1 worst bench press spotter situation of them all.

About 3 months ago I was in the gym and ready to start my 4th, final and heaviest set on the bench press. To ensure I didn’t accidentally kill myself, I asked this guy for a spot. I’ve seen this guy in the gym all the time. We have sort of a “friendly nod of recognition” gym relationship going. This of course is when we nod hello/goodbye to each other on our ways in and out of the gym. We don’t shake hands or actually, ya know, speak. We both seem perfectly happy with the nod.

I seem to have a lot of this type of gym relationship going.

So anyway, he walks into the area where the bench press benches are and is about to pass me. We both nod “hello” as usual, but this time I also add in a point to the bench I’m using along with the sentence “Can you give me a spot?” He says “Sure.” We just had our biggest conversation of all time.

The next thing you know, I’m bench pressing. I was aiming for 6 reps during this set. Last time I only got 5 which makes 6 reps my goal this. The set was going well, I felt strong, my form felt good, I felt 6 reps was very doable. That was until rep #3. See, on rep #3… something happened. Something that has never before happened.

Something landed on my forehead.

Now, at that second, I had no idea what happened. All I knew was I had some heavy weight in the air above me and a goal of 6 reps. This was rep #3, so I had to go on.

The next thing you know, something lands on my forehead again. A second after that, something else lands on me, this time near my nose. I was only at rep #4 and half of my focus has now drifted towards what the hell is landing on my face.

I pressed on, though. I knew my bench press goal was to get 6 reps on my 4th set, so I had to finish. I wasn’t going to let whatever this strange occurrence was stop me. But then, during rep #5, it happened again… only worse. Now whatever it is that has been landing on my face during the last 2 reps just hit me in my right eye.

At this point I’m doing rep #5 with only one eye open. This has become more of a distraction than I can handle. I probably could have gotten rep #6, but I had to stop. I put the bar back on the rack and was done with this set. Whatever it was that was hitting me in the face and eye has ruined my 4th bench press set.

I sat up on the bench, turned to my spotter (who didn’t have to do a thing) and politely said “Thanks man.” He said “No problem.” It was at that very second that I finally realized what ruined my set, what landed on my face, and what hit me in the eye. What was it, you ask?

Sweat. My bench press spotter’s sweat dripped on to my face/right eye.

This is a true story, in case anyone is wondering. This dude honestly sweat all over my face. He even said “Sorry about the sweat” as though that was going to help at all. I had someone else’s sweat on my forehead, cheek and eye. I’m not a germa-phobe by any means, BUT I HAD SOME GUY’S SWEAT IN MY EYE!!!

So, for anyone looking for a moral to this story, here’s what I can give you. The next time someone spots you on the bench press and you felt they did something annoying or distracting in some way, remember this… the #1 official most distracting thing that a bench press spotter can do to you during a set is drip their filthy disgusting sweat into your eye. So if whatever they did wasn’t that… you have absolutely nothing to complain about you big baby.

Oh, and the secondary moral is to make sure your spotter didn’t just finish doing cardio 2 minutes before they spot you.

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