Strength Training and the Young Athlete
Strength training: Is it right for my young athlete?
In a word, yes!
The topic of young children lifting weights has been and continues to be, widely debated among strength professionals, coaches and parents. While we live in the information age where we can get the answer to any question with a quick search on our phone or computer, it can be very overwhelming to sort through by yourself. And how do you know if the source you are following is even credible or qualified to speak on this topic?
Let’s start with the basics. What is considered strength training? In my experience, when lifting weights is mentioned to youth coaches and parents, the first thing that comes to mind is something that looks like this:
While that is indeed strength training, that is nowhere close to what our athletes do; especially our adolescent athletes. Here are a few examples of what lifting weights looks like for our young kids and some of the progressions of certain exercises:
While these aren’t the exercises that draw a ton of attention and get you thousands of likes on social media, they are the foundation of any quality strength program. If you can’t control your own bodyweight in a controlled environment like the weight room, then how can you expect to do it in the chaos of competition? Especially as a young, growing athlete who is constantly learning how to efficiently use and move their body in space. Furthermore, mastering the basic bodyweight movements will help strengthen your muscles and tendons, helping to greatly reduce the chance of injury on the field or court.
So now you’re probably thinking, “Well, of course, my kid can do bodyweight exercises without hurting themselves, I’m worried they’ll be squatting and deadlifting heavy weights and hurt their growth plates!” This is a very common concern for parents, and rightfully so.
Depending on when their final growth spurt is, growth plates can start to close anywhere from the ages of 16–21 years old. Damage to one or more growth plates can inhibit development and, in some cases, cause deformity of that particular area. That is why we focus on the basics and progress our athletes only as they are ready. If you refer back to the images above, you’ll see that our athletes start with bodyweight and gradually increase as they get stronger and more coordinated.
As a strength coach for almost 10 years, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with a variety of different coaches and parents. In that time, I’ve heard several concerns over their athletes lifting weights. The main concern is that they are too young or only weigh so much and therefore would hurt themselves lifting in the weight room. While these concerns are understandable, the controlled environment of the weight room, along with a competent coach will mitigate chances for this to happen.
I’ve also found that the kids are lifting much heavier loads, in much more compromising positions, on a daily basis outside of the weight room, mainly in the form of backpacks and sports bags. The New York Times had a great article addressing the problem of heavy backpacks that kids wear these days. In it, they state that “On average, 6th graders in the study were carrying backpacks weighing 18.4 pounds, although some backpacks weighed as much as 30 pounds. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that a child’s backpack weigh no more than 10 to 20 percent of a child’s weight.”
A glimpse of what many of today’s kids look like carrying around multiple bags for school, sports & other extracurricular activities.
Heavy bags and backpacks aren’t the only unseen risk to the young, developing athlete (or any adolescent for that matter). Kids will be kids and they love to run, jump, flip, roll and dive while they’re playing. You may be surprised to know that just jumping out of a tree or down the last few steps in the house can create g-forces (gravity forces) on the body up to 10x greater than anything they would experience in the weight room.
For a little more perspective, here are a few comparisons of the g-forces athletes will face in the weight room compared to what they will experience in games, as well as other common activities. Everybody experiences 1G in everyday life which is the regular force of gravity when still. Therefore 4G would be four times the force of gravity. For example, if someone weighing 100 lbs while standing still experiences 4G’s, they would momentarily weigh 400 lbs.
Here are a few other common activities and their g-force:
- Bottom of a playground swing — 2g
- Space shuttle taking off — 3g
- A cough — 3.5g
- Slap on the back — 4g
- Roller Coaster 3–4g
- Titan roller coaster at Six Flags over Texas — 4.5g
- Jumping off a 1-meter high object — 10g
- A car crash that can break bones — 10g
- Header in soccer — up to 55g
- 4-foot drop on grass — 246g
- Foot hitting soccer ball — 300g
To bring everything together consider these 4 scenarios for the same 100lb athlete: running into another soccer player while playing the ball, getting tackled in football, colliding with another player while running the bases, performing a 200lb squat/deadlift in the weight room. According to the graph above, the first 3 scenarios will apply roughly 40g’s to the athlete. This would equate to 4,000lbs of force for that instant of contact. Compare that to the squat or deadlift. The athlete only has an additional 200lbs of weight pushing down on their frame.
This is why it is so important for young athletes to perform strength training. The forces they will experience outside playing or while competing in sport are very high and they need to be strong enough to withstand them or something will give. Usually, that’s in the form of an injury. Our #1 goal as strength coaches is to reduce the likelihood of these injuries and we do so through scientifically-proven principles and age-appropriate exercises and progressions.
I have found that life is all about perspective. Some things we naturally don’t think about being harmful, but when compared to other common activities we do on a daily basis, we see things in a different light. There are so many great things that come from kids running, jumping and playing sports. Their bodies adapt to each stimulus and grow stronger and more resilient on a daily basis. Why not add a little strength training in the mix to make them even more resilient and, more importantly, healthy?
