Transcription:
Strength Training for Young Athletes

Melanie Cole (Host): For our young athletes who want to build strength, what’s the best way to go about it? What are some good practices to help children do strength training? My guest is Russell Gage. He’s the Sport’s Performance Director at Henry Mayo Fitness and Health. Russell what a great topic that we are discussing today. There’s been a lot of controversy over the years about whether children should strength train at all. Is it appropriate for children and at what age can they start?

Russell Gage, CSCS, USAW, CES (Guest): Yeah definitely. I think it’s good for all ages to be able to get involved in it and the sooner the better for a lot of kids. I mean you don’t want – you don’t need a five-year-old power lifter doing as heavy as they can possibly lift; but just getting that body awareness, doing some like body weight training and stuff is going to be great for kids to do. I don’t really have a perfect number for a kid to start at. There are so many factors that goes into that, genetics, maturity, and all that but what I find is 11 years old is usually a good age to kind of start getting experience with some type of resistance training.

Host: Well I agree with you. That’s a great age. So, let’s talk about some of the risks, as kids are growing and their bones are in ossification; can doing too much weight, if it’s not body weight exercises, which we will talk about too; but can that affect their bone growth and actually cause harm in the long-term?

Russell: I haven’t seen anything on that. I’ve followed a lot of the experts in the fitness industry who have been working with kids for years and years and there really isn’t a lot out there as far as evidence or research goes that shows that it actually stunts growth. The only evidence that I’ve ever been shown or ever found on my own time was a case study with people who had child laborers in China doing large amounts of lifting at a young age and that showed some stunted growth there, but that was something that was done a long, long time ago and it didn’t actually pertain to any type of physical fitness, it was just child laborer kind of research that was done. But no other research has really been shown or done on – at least that I’m aware of on youth in this stunting their growth.

Host: So, are there any risks to strength training for kids?

Russell: Yeah, I mean you don’t want to be stupid when training kids or training youth and having them trying to do things that adults do. I think the biggest problem with youth training is we treat kids like little adults and they’re not. The big thing that kids need to be doing in the weight room is more like play, more just fun activities and more just getting the body moving in multiple planes, multiple directions and building that just awareness for their bodies as they grow and mature.

Host: Have you seen if there’s a link between strength training and athletic performance? There are so many youth athletes today Russell and can it also help because as we see sports specific training and chronic overuse injuries in our youth athletes; can it help with some of those injuries and help with athletic performance overall?

Russell: Yeah. A lot of the sports injuries really pertain to a lot of like early specialization. Doing a lot of the same things over and over again really early on and with athletic training, with weight training and anything like that; it’s teaching kids movement first and developing those good movement patterns before they go and try to do the same movement pattern over and over again. And a lot of sports will have kids starting at age 9 playing the exact same sport all year round where like I said before, kids need to just learn movement from the get-go. They need to learn to do more things and have that experience where being a multiple sport athlete or getting in and doing a little bit more is going to help.

Host: So, then let’s talk some specific exercises. As kids start to think about wanting to workout and wanting to train; what do you recommend that they start with and tell us about some of the exercises that you really like for them to do, whether it’s pushups or chin-ups or lunges or give us some exercises Russell.

Russell: Yeah. With kids I kind of break the movement categories down that they need to begin to develop and especially in a weight room setting where we can work on it into four movements. Throws, jumps, sprints and then some weights. Being able to throw things, med-ball tosses, slams, high tosses. A lot of times is getting the body to get the mechanics from lower to upper extremity and getting that rotational force in. Throwing things is a really good one.

Jumping. Just doing light plyometrics. Doing little box jumps. Doing little hurdle jumps and getting them into that quicker explosive work. Bounding drills are really good and a lot of the times, that’s more what’s going to get a lot of the younger kids’ attention and keep them focused to something that they are going to enjoy doing.

And then sprints. Speed is very important. Teaching them how to coordinate. Run in a straight line is probably one of the more difficult challenges right off the bat and just getting them to get that top speed. Games like tag and chase and stuff like that are great to get them into those sprint mechanics and just get them running at a fast pace.

And then when it comes to weight training, I usually try to stick with three simple movements. Just getting them to first learn how to squat, how to push and then how to pull. Squat wise, usually just adding body weight is fine initially. Lower extremity body weight works really well. Because they are already working with a great deal of weight. Pushups, pullups, all that usually you want to add some type of external factor or external load for upper extremities because usually they can – if you are adding some external load to like a bench-press or something; that weight, that bar or that dumb bell is already going to be lighter than their body weight whereas a pushup, lower extremity I will stick with body weight to begin and then start to load and then upper body wise, adding some type of machine, pulldown, seated row, cable rows, even doing some type of like band assisted chin-ups work really well.

And then some type of spotted bench press or something to where they can start learning to push without having to do pushups and destroy their shoulders with bad mechanics because they can’t control the rest of their body.

Host: So, if they are doing all of these things and those are great recommendations and they’re progressing; how do they gradually progress. I mean they are not little adults. So, how is weight and banding and some external forces, how do we know how much to add for these little guys so that they can progress and get stronger?

Russell: What I follow as far as my progressions go especially with youth is a quote by Dan John and he says, “Movement first, volume second and load third.” So, my first thing I’m trying to get down with a lot of kids and anyone new to fitness is just getting the movement pattern down, keeping the repetitions low. I don’t really need to load very heavy; it’s just getting – making sure they know what the movement is. They can feel, there’s a cognitive ability to know what’s going on and once that movement pattern looks good and they can recreate that movement pattern day in and day out; week in, week out, then starting to build volume on top of that. Building up five reps, ten reps, even if you are doing it by time, maybe like 20 secs to 30 secs of a repetition mark if you are going like circuit based.

Before we start to load and that’s why I say load comes on that third and then you can add external factors such as weights or with upper body, start trying to do some more body weight stuff or getting close to some type of body weight resistance. But really, a lot of kids it’s more getting that movement correct and making sure they understand it, adding the volume and then as they get older, the load really comes in to where they are really trying to get that extra resistance in.

Host: That’s a great point. So, now what are some of the other important things you might want coaches and parents to remember as far as hydration, proper technique, you’ve talked about getting that movement pattern down, cooling off, warming up, stretching. Give us a little lesson in how you would like us to remind our children of some of those things.

Russell: I kind of hit on it already. I think one of my big passions is that kids aren’t miniature adults. We look at what it takes to be successful as an adult in what we do and it takes long hours doing the same thing, staying focused on one task, having an education and yet a child’s road to success really is about creating a fun environment, having shorter hours of things to do, specializing late, having more of a broad range of things, being exposed to more things when they are younger so then they can really kind of figure out where they are at and then creating a passion for them in it. If there is not a passion within a sport, not a passion within working out; you are losing out on those – that long-term athletic development. You are missing out on creating those lifestyle habits later on down the road.

And as parents, the hard part is finding their passions, not your passions. It’s very easy for the parent to want to put them in the sport you played or have them do the activities that you did or that you enjoyed and yet you really want to find what each kid’s passion is for because those are the keys to success. You got to be passionate about it. They have to have that drive. They have to want to go workout or want to play their sport. They have to want to do the activity to really get better at it. I could throw the perfect program, I could throw the perfect exercises out there, but if someone doesn’t want to do it and aren’t willing to give their all towards it; it’s not going to be the best program there is.

Host: Wow, what a great description of it. So, wrap it up for us Russell if you would with your best advice on getting children involved in strength training programs and fitness in general, being a good role model; what do you want us to know?

Russell: Summing it all up, for kids, for youth, you are looking at ages nine, ten, eleven, twelve; it’s got to be deliberate play. You want it to be something where it is organized. It’s not absolute chaos. There’s purpose to what you are doing and yet it has to be that play. The long-term is really what you want to look at. I heard a quote once and it’s, “Prepare the child for the path, and not the path for the child.” And what we should be doing with kids in getting them involved in fitness and getting them involved in moving and staying healthy is looking at that long-term, looking at that long-term development within the child and saying, not necessarily what’s going to be great for them just now, but what is it we are going to do for them as they grow and as they mature and as they become adults and contribute to society and are we teaching them that hard work pays off, are they learning those things early, not just are you great at your sport. Or not just can you lift heavy weights. Or not just the stuff that burns people out most of the time.

Host: That’s great advice. Thank you so much for joining us and sharing your expertise and working with youth athletes. It’s just great when they can learn that at a young age and hopefully these behaviors will follow them through their lifetimes. Thank you so much. That wraps up another episode of It’s Your Health Radio with Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital. Head on over to our website at www.henrymayo.com for more information and to get connected with one of our providers. If you found this podcast as informative as I did, please share on your social media and be sure to check out all the other fascinating podcasts in our library. I’m Melanie Cole.