Are training parters good or bad? Well it depends on the circumstances.
When I began working out at the age of 16, I had no idea what a training partner was. I just went to the YMCA and started doing weight exercises that I saw in the magazine. I picked a few exercises that I thought looked interesting such as bench press, standing press, curls and tricep pushdowns. Even at that I began to make some progress as my body responded very well. I'd look around the gym at the 2 other members and see what they were doing and sometimes copy them.
It wasn't long before I asked for a spot on the bench press and then the other person would work in with me. Maybe that's where training partner came from? I'm not sure but the inspiration did help.
I started incorporating other exercises and results popped up fast. Some one in the gym had me work in with them doing squats, deadlifts and bench presses and it did inspire me to enter a power lifting contest which I took second. In this case a training partner was good. AS you can see by the photos my body was developing nicely.
When I left Bakersfield and moved to Los Angeles I began training at Bill Pearl's gym in Inglewood which was really a hard core gym. I trained alone at first then met some other guys that would work in on sets with me and we motivated each other to train harder.
I learned more from training with others but at time unless the person trains hard it slows down your tme in the gym and if they talk too much, then it really slows it down.
I moved on to Gold's Gym after about a year and met a whole new group of friends. It wasn't long that I began training with Arnold himself and learned even more. We had some great workouts together and my progress was even better by far.
These two pictures are only one year apart and you can see a huge difference just by training with Arnold.
Having the support of someone else who was serious really helped a lot. I also trained with Bill Grant but his hours would change on his job so it was difficult to be consistent however we did have good workouts.
There were many times over the years I trained alone but I'm self motivating and have to problem training by myself and in fact I can go faster and not be held back. Many times I've had younger guys want to train with me and I actually made seven of them throw up on my routine.
As I get older I don't workout near as heavy and limit to 3 exercises per body part and seem to get good results.
Then on occasion I will train with Inna, my Girlfriend and we can have a good workout together.
Buy over all it's up to the person. If you want motivation and need a training partner to get through a work out, then by all means do it. If you are a self motivated person then you will be able to go faster through your workouts and really flush the muscle out. Try both and see what works for you. But for sure, keep training.