I have a group of kids aged 11-17 at my church that I’m going to start training and taking to powerlifting competitions as a team. The idea here is to do well and hopefully we’ll attract some kids from the surrounding neighborhood to the church.
I have experience coaching kids in powerlifting but never more than 1 or 2 at a time so working with a group will be a new challenge for me.
Because there are so many kids and I have limited time and equipment to train them, I don’t want to use a progressive overload system like Starting Strength because we would have to spend so much time changing weights between sets.
Instead, I thought I’d use an ascending barbell approach where we gradually add weight to the bar and let everyone take it for a set of 5 reps. Once someone has a set where they really struggle they’d be out of the rotation until the next lift. I would arrange the lifts as follows:
Monday:
Squat
Bench Press
Barbell Row
Thursday:
Deadlift
Overhead Press
DB Row
Saturday:
Front Squat
Dips
Pull Ups
I included some extra lifts to keep the kids motivation up. I understand that frequency with the lifts helps add to proficiency with the lifts; however, I have had issues when training kids in the past of them getting bored with squatting every time they train and eventually giving up. If any of y’all have experience coaching kids in a group I would really appreciate your feedback.