I’m 17 and I’ve been working out for the last 3 years. I’ve steadily worked up over the years to doing 5x5’s for mostly big lifts such as benching and pull-ups. The only thing I haven’t worked is my legs. The reason is that I’ve had two different doctors tell me that working out my lower body could stunt my growth.
I’ve been very short my entire life and am about 5’5" right now. I really want to work my lower body and want to know if I should listen to the doctors or just go for it. Also, the doctors were not specialists in this particular field.
Thanks for the input.
The only thing that relates to weight lifting and your growth is the amount of food you consume.
If you do lots of weight training and do not eat properly, you will not grow in height fully because your body will not have enough nutrients/calories to provide energy to build bones etc.
You may eat enough to grow muscle, but it does not necasserily mean your bones will be growing also, you have to eat for both when you are trying to gain height and muscle.
One more thing to point out, is I would avoid going under 8 reps on squats. Heavy weights on your back will compress your spine, which is obviously not conductive to reaching your height potential. 12-15+ rep squats are great for building muscle still.
[quote]sands wrote:
Take your time. Use good form.
I’ve yet to meet someone who is shorter because of squatting or doing deadlifts.[/quote]
That is because you can not test to see if they limit your growth.
You can not possibly tell if someone is going to reach a certain specific height.
If someone does squats and reaches 5’10", you might say they are not shorter because of it. But who’s to say that if they didn’t they would of reached over 6’?
It is IMPOSSIBLE to test whether or not squats/deadlifts will stunt your growth. But it is pretty common sense to avoid heaving a heavy weight pressing down on your spine.
[quote]Goodfellow wrote:
It is IMPOSSIBLE to test whether or not squats/deadlifts will stunt your growth. But it is pretty common sense to avoid heaving a heavy weight pressing down on your spine.[/quote]
How is it common sense to avoid having a heavy weight pressing down on your spine? Didn’t you ever read Harrison Bergeron?
[quote]Goodfellow wrote:
That is because you can not test to see if they limit your growth.
You can not possibly tell if someone is going to reach a certain specific height.
If someone does squats and reaches 5’10", you might say they are not shorter because of it. But who’s to say that if they didn’t they would of reached over 6’?
It is IMPOSSIBLE to test whether or not squats/deadlifts will stunt your growth. But it is pretty common sense to avoid heaving a heavy weight pressing down on your spine.[/quote]
Good point, though considering the overall time spent with weight pressing down on your spine compared to when your not training i don’t see where some doctors come from with the idea that your growth can be stunted becuase of preforming squats or deadlifts . Then again I’m not a doctor, regardless of what I tell myself each morning.
But in one of Dan Browns book he writes about how humans grow because of gravity and animals are small because of gravity(they are small because of they breathing system?) but lets assume he has got a fact right… then squatting will actually help you grow taller ?
If gravity wasn’t present then peoples bones wouldn’t form properly, if that is what you are getting at. Infact if you spent over a year in space your bones would degrade so much that if someone patted you on the back your spine would crumble.
And animals are smaller because of gravity? That makes no sense at all. Animals could not function properly without gravity, infact rats that were pregnant in space, gave birth on earth, and the babies had no sense of direction or if they were up or down.
The only connection to what you are saying is that Squats would increase your bone density (which all weight training does).