Starting Strength

before it sticks for too long or goes back down too much or too fast.
    After the spotter decides to take the bar, the amount of help provided will depend on the situation and a correct assessment of it. When someone is spotting an intermediate lifter with the last rep of the fifth set of five, the situation will warrant a different amount of help than in the case of an experienced lifter being spotted on a PR single, or a novice trainee doing the first heavy work set of his third workout. Each instance requires a different response in terms of how quickly to react, how closely to follow the bar, how much weight to take off, whether to help maintain bar velocity, and how fast and how hard to help rack the bar.
     
    So, in the interest of fostering a constructive relationship between you and your spotter, here are The Rules for Spotters:
     
At work-set weights, the spotter always watches every rep and is ready to react to the lifter’s situation. Complete riveted attention is not necessary for warm-up sets for which the spotter is not coaching a novice, but for heavy sets, when the weight has the potential to cause problems, the spotter must be watching the bar. A spotter who is looking around the room during a heavy set is not spotting .
This one is tough for many people because it seems to conflict with #1, so try to perceive the nuance: after the spotter hands the bar off to the lifter, the spotter must stay out of the way until either the last rep is completed or the lifter needs help . The lifter is looking at the ceiling, so “out of the way” means out of the lifter’s sight picture of the ceiling and the bar. If you are the spotter, do not hover over the lifter and do not stick your hands anywhere near the bar, because doing so will distract the lifter, who is staring at the position reference on the ceiling. “Needs help” means that the lifter cannot complete the rep, indicated by the fact that the bar a) has actually stopped moving up for more than 1 or 2 seconds, b) has started to move back down, or c) has moved in a direction other than up, i.e., toward the face, toward the feet, or sideways.
If you are the spotter and you determine that the lifter needs help, take the bar with your hands and guide it back to the rack hooks. (The lifter should stay with you during this process, not releasing his grip on the bar.) But unless the lifter actually needs help – see rule #2 – Do Not Touch The Bar. This rule must be strictly obeyed because any rep touched by anyone other than the lifter cannot be counted as a rep by the lifter . This means that a set of 5 reps, the last one of which was “spotted,” i.e., touched IN ANY WAY by the spotter, is officially a set of 4 reps. If you are the lifter, this rule keeps your rep count honest; without it, you have no way of knowing how much help you were given and therefore no way of honestly claiming to have done the rep unassisted.
      If the numbers written down in your training log are not honest, you have absolutely no way to evaluate the results of your program. Since there is no point in lying to yourself about your workout, counting an assisted rep as yours is pointless in the long term. This principle obviously applies to all lifts that customarily require spotters. If you let your spotter help you on your work sets, you’ll soon have absolutely no idea what you’re really benching, and no idea if you’re making progress.
This is worth repeating: any rep touched by anybody other than the lifter does NOT BELONG TO THE LIFTER. As a spotter, you are responsible for controlling your desire to participate in the set. Your job is to help if necessary, not to share the work and the glory. Stay away from the bar unless your help is actually needed; if you don’t, the lifter has my permission to slap you for interfering with his potential personal record.
    For both lifter and spotter, when racking the bar, make sure that you touch the uprights first . Don’t try to set the bar down directly on the hooks. If you (the lifter) move the bar back with locked elbows until it touches the vertical part of the uprights, and then slide it down onto the hooks, you won’t have to worry about whether it will stay in the rack. If the uprights are touched first, the bar will always be above the hooks. If straightening out your elbows got the bar clear of the hooks when you took it out, then locked elbows will ensure that it is high enough to get back over the