I know a guy in england who is a ‘fitness coach’, he is in his young 20s I believe. I am a teenager, I’ll leave my actual age out of this, because it has less than nothing to do with the actual subject of the thread. I was talking with him, and amazingly enough he knew very very little about general training. Even I knew about as much as him, and I know barely nothing at all. We were talking about training for young people, and he claims that it’s dangerous. We’ve all heard how it slowers ones growth, makes you get problems later in your life, and so on. I’ve heard from people that actually KNOWS what they’re talking about that training for teenagers is only positive, unless exercises are done wrong of course. So, I google this for a good 15-20 minutes and find plenty of articles on the subject. Every single one says that it’s not dangerous at all, if done correctly (again).
School starts, and this other guy at my age goes to another gym. I chatted a bit with him about training, and he says that his ‘personal trainer’ told him that weight lifting would make you stop growing?! Oh great. Then he gave me a short lecture about how I’d never grow antoher centimeter/inch. I asked what the heck he did in the gym?.. Body exercises, and cardio.
I’m still a firm believer that it does nothing unhealthy to you if preformed correctly. So I’d like to ask you all if you have anything you’d like to share on the subject. A few questions:
*Am I wrong?
*Does anyone have any links to articles regarding the subject?
*Any input at all on the subject, ANYTHING would be helpful.
absurd. There is thinking out there that people younger than 16 ought no go heavy, as there is a minicule risk of damaging the “growth plates” in the bone. I do think you can safely train at any age.
Young fella’s (your trainer) think they have all the answers. It’s only when they get older that they realise how much they didn’t know, and how much they still have to learn.
Good on you for looking for the CORRECT information and not just accepting the word of your young trainer friend.
I started lifting at 14.I’m 18 in november and I’ve been through 3 growth spurts since I was 14(on the third right now)and I just hit 6 feet and will probably hit 6’3 or 6’4 when I’m done(normal hieght for males in my family).I like growing through a spurt while I’m trying to lean down,helps a lot.My weight goes up when I train for it to go up.I have little problem gaining size(losing it is kinda hard).
If you need more proof:
the football coaches and players have been asking me to play for them because they don’t have enough size on the team,girls like my muscles,guys don’t mess with me…at all,though that may be an attitude thing.
I say go for it.And one more thing,why would the guy you know pay for a membership when he’s doing cardio and bodyweight exercises only?
I agree that young lifters shouldn’t start with heavy weights not because of the injury risks, but because there are exercises far more useful for their development. Young kids naturally gravitate towards irregular loads but their greatest hindrences to proper development are a total lack of discipline and team mentality.
In order to deal with all these limitations at once I like to start my young athletes on sedan work. At the age of six they’re small enough that they can only carry the chairs by resting the supports on their shoulders and working with the rest of their team to move the chair properly. If anyone gets lazy, they all get crushed (and whipped accordingly). The children learn team work quite quickly.
As they age and grow stronger their team sizes shrink accordingly until they’re ready by 15-16 to carry the sedan chairs over several miles in only two man teams. This is clear evidence of the effectiveness of this system, as kids trained with other systems aren’t ready to carry a chair properly even over a simple one mile course until at least 17.
The most important part though is that these kids aren’t just made better athletes, they’re made better, more obedient, people. Other programs make large numbers of kids devote their youth to training when only a tiny percentage of them will make it all the way in sport. The vast majority are left on their own with few oportunities, having spent their time training rather than studying.
My program offers the best of both worlds, as not only are the most talented prepared to achieve at the highest levels of sport, but the rest move on with invaluable training and experience in the exciting and fast growing industry of sedan chair carriage.
Clearly, if you train young people you owe it to them to find out more about our exciting system. Sedan Chair Training is here to stay. Visit my website for more information regarding our program as well as information on upcoming seminar dates and our certification program.
I say go for it.And one more thing,why would the guy you know pay for a membership when he’s doing cardio and bodyweight exercises only?
I have no bloody idea. That’s what I find so absurd about the whole thing.
Anyways, I told him that it’s only a rumor, and not true at all. Showed him the website, yet he blindly believes his personal trainer. Gonna try to talk to him tomorrow, even though he got mad at me for telling him that his trainer was wrong on the subject (via MSN). I feel I should atleast try again.
I asked my weight training coach this same question in High School. I was happy with the answer he gave me so here it is:
Professional sports attract some of the biggest people you will ever see, look at the average height of say a basketball or football player and look at the average height for a male american. The average athlete is huge compared to the average american. So you mean to tell me that the athletes that have been training since they were kids would have been even taller if they had not lifted weights. That would put some of them around 71/2-8feet. The fact of the matter is lifting does not keep you from growing and if you need proof of that turn on the sports channel.
After hearing that I was completely content with working out. Hope it helps you too.
Training only slows down youths growth if they don’t eat enough food to accomodate the extra demands. With that included, it should only speed up the growth of muscle and thickening of bones. Some people fear it may compress their spines, as children have more cartiledge in their skeletal structure than bonded platelets. That’s a legitimate concern I guess.
Even so, kids can still take quite a beating, they CAN bear weight, maybe just not the same relative %s mature people can.
Maybe kids should just place more of a focus on pulling movements that don’t compress their skeletal structure, like pullups or rows. rather than pushing movements/ Or, if they do, spend time hanging on a bar to decompress and stuff like Pavel says to.
That, and work a lot more on attaining proper lifting technique (with lighter weights), skills for movements like sports, and so on, as formation of the brain during that age is best and as far as I know, superior to adults in every way (save the lack of source material), opposite their bodies.
I’m turning 18 in less than two weeks. I’ve been lifting 4-5 times a week on a routine given to the wrestling team at my high school by my coach whose son is a personal trainer. I’ve been following that since May. I’ve since had a physical, at which my pediatrician noticed my increased size (gained about 10 lbs this summer) and I told him I lift and run daily. He was glad, and encouraged me to continue. I also checked out webmd on the subject before I started the daily routine, and saw that many studies found that kids old enough to seriously play a sport are old enough for strength training.
Good luck.
A-ron
