A Little Boost

By Eric Vanderwall

A young blonde guy wearing expensive wireless earbuds failed to rise from his back squat. I looked over from the adjacent half-rack, not sure whether or how to help. His shirt was neon green and his face was young and smooth. He dumped the bar on the safety arms—he was in a four-post full-rack—and started pulling off plates while crouched.

“Do you need someone to spot you?”

He didn’t look up. His earbuds must have been on.

“Do you need a spotter?”

He took out an earbud and stood up.

“No, I have the pins.” He began to crouch back toward the bar, and then said, “Actually, I may need help on this next one.”

I went back to my rack and began a second set of front squats. Around the third rep, I noticed him in my peripheral vision, waiting. After the fifth rep, I racked the bar. I had meant to go for ten, which I had done on the first set, because the rep range of the program I followed at the time was eight to ten reps. It was still possible to get distracted and lose count. When I turned toward him I was out of breath and lightheaded, as I often was after a set because of some iron and oxygenation issues. Only once had I passed out in the gym. That had been a back day.

“I need your help on this one.”

“Where should I stand?”

“Just give me a little boost if you see me struggling.”

“On the bar?”

I was still out of breath and a bit dizzy.

“Like this.”

He extended his arms straight and pressed upward into my armpits. I was wearing an old electrical supply company t-shirt from which I had cut away the collar, the sleeves, and some of the sides. My shoulders and flanks were sweaty and exposed. The contact of skin on skin felt slippery and confusing. I was still recovering from the abbreviated set, but pretty certain I would not pass out.

I nodded.

“I’m going for four.”

I nodded.

“I’m going for four reps.”

I nodded again.

I stood behind him as he situated the bar behind his neck on his upper trapezius and brought his spine and hips into alignment beneath it. He pressed up to lift the bar and stepped back away from the catches. There were a lot of plates on the bar, and it seemed out of balance. He wobbled a bit.

He did the first rep with visible effort. His form looked good.

On his second rep I descended with him, giving the lightest of touches under his armpits to help him back up. He said something I couldn’t make out.

I went down with him again on the third rep. He seemed to need more of a boost, so that’s what I gave him.

It was during the fourth rep that the solidity went out of his posterior chain at the bottom of the squat. He was not going to rise without help. I gave him a firm push into the armpits with the thumb-sides of my flat, extended hands, and he began to get up before collapsing back to full knee flexion, a point below the bottom of the form. He was like a little egg.

“I’ll dump it,” he said.

I backed up.

“I’m going to pitch it.”

He moved oddly, as if concerned for the welfare of the bar, and the bar fell the last few inches to the safety arms. When he stood up I patted his bare back, but the positioning was awkward, and my hand banged against one of the hollow, chamfered metal posts. The skin was scraped without being cut. Some of his sweat was on my hand, and it had a consistency different from my sweat. I didn’t usually sweat from my hands.

I went back to my bag beside the half-rack and crouched on my heels next to it. From the bag I retrieved a towel to wipe my face and head. They were still a little moist from earlier. Another set of squats and three sets of overhead presses were ahead of me at this rack. My program at the time trained the whole body with compound movements. I did that on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On the other days I did mobility drills and some light ab work.

After the young guy moved off and started doing something else on an adjustable bench in the vicinity of the dumbbells and plate-loaded machines at the other end of the long room, I glanced over a few times to see if we were to have a continued mutual acknowledgement or not. He seemed busy.

Eric Vanderwall is a writer, editor, and musician. His fiction has previously appeared in Memoryhouse, Pathos, The Nabokovian, and The Ekphrastic Review, and his book reviews have been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Chicago Review of Books, the Star Tribune, Willamette Week, and elsewhere. Please visit his website www.ericvanderwall.com.