Bringing Your Partner Along

You've been training a few months, it's going well, and it seems obvious that the person you live with should come too.

It works often enough to be worth trying but it can fail in three predictable ways.

The first is that you become their coach. You know what a good squat looks like now, you can see theirs isn't one, and it is almost impossible not to say so. Coaching from a spouse doesn't land as coaching. It lands as criticism from someone who also comments on how you load the dishwasher! Meanwhile the person paid to coach them has to work around your interference.

The second is competition. One of you is fitter. In a room where scores go on a board, the gap becomes visible three times a week, and the person on the wrong side of it starts finding reasons that Tuesday doesn't work. This happens more with couples than with friends, because you carry it home.

The third is logistics, and it's the most common of the lot. Two adults at the same class means somebody has to be with the children. Sort that before you book anything — a grandparent, a sitter, or two different classes on the same evening. We have plenty of couples who go 6pm and 7pm and hand over in the car park!

All three are avoidable with an agreement made before the first session rather than after the third row.

Agree that neither of you comments on the other's training. Not the technique, not the weight, not the score. If they want your opinion they'll ask for it, and if they ask, "ask the coach" is a good answer. Agree that you scale independently, and that you don't need to compare.

What you keep is the good part. The drive there, the shared 5:30am alarm, the fact that neither of you has to explain why Tuesday evening is spoken for. Two people with the same fixed points in the week is a stronger structure than one person's willpower.

The one thing that makes it work: on the way home, ask how it was, not what they got. This shared passion for fitness is infectious and a great addition to a relationship.

If one of you is keen and the other is nervous, that call is worth having together. Free, no obligation, 15 minutes with Jeremy or Beth at crossfitchiltern.com.