Kid Friendly Workout Advice

Does your young child show an interest for physical fitness? Have they expressed the desire to start exercising and lifting weights? With childhood obesity rates continually rising, you might be tempted to jump right in and not only encourage your child to workout but to push them to limits beyond his or her capability. Take caution. Keep a few tips in mind when considering training your child in weight lifting.

Remember: They Are Still a Kid

Though they have small bodies, kids are not miniature adults. Their bodies are still developing with muscles and bones still growing. Therefore you have to use different methods when training a child than you would for an adult. Emotionally, anatomically, and physiologically, kids are very different from adults. So don’t just pick up a weight lifting manual and start with the first exercise.

Bone Health

At the very earliest a child’s bones mature at the age of 14. Some kid’s bones will not reach their full maturity until age 22. So consider this when allowing a child to lift weights. They have immature skeletons. Girls especially can experience negative results that affect the rest of their lives if pushed too hard.

Childhood Diseases

Keep an eye out for irregularities as your child works out. Osgood schlatter disease, for example, results from growth related overuse injuries. Additionally, children need to warm up more than an adult would because of their immature temperature regulation systems. They have a much larger surface area to muscle mass ratio compared to an adult.

Keep the Limits Low

Because they do not sweat as much as an adult, a child is much more prone to heat exhaustion. So watch them carefully. Even heat stroke can result if a child is not properly hydrated or cooled. Additionally, low muscle mass and an immature hormone system make strength and speed development much slower than an adult’s. Children will have a smaller capacity for exercise because of their breathing limitations and heart response differences.

The Workout

So how SHOULD the workout differ for a child than for an adult? First of all, make sure your child stretches completely before working out. Additionally, if you insist on having your lift weights begin with light loads and smaller increments of weight increasing. I personally recommend children perform mostly bodyweight exercises to begin with. Especially until they know how, and are able, to perform the exercises with correct posture and technique.

Children also should not work out any more than three non-consecutive days a week. And in the midst of their exercise, they should continue to drink water as they are prone to dehydration.

Many hard core exercising adults will want to push their children. They will think that they need to encourage them to do more and to push their limits, but they need to realize that they can’t just expect a child to “suck it up,” because a child’s body has limits that an adult does not have to deal with.

Kristy Lee Wilson

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Why Do You Test Young Athletes?

Brian Grasso is the CEO of the International Youth Conditioning Association and is considered one of the premier authorities on youth athletic development in the world. Access Brian’s free database of articles and exercises at www.DevelopingAthletics.com.

How to test a group of young athletes has become a popular ‘discussion board’ question recently. I have seen this query raised on several prominent websites and have been asked about it a great deal over the past few months as well. Thus… my desire to touch on this subject.

The common curiosity surrounds how to test absolute strength ability via 1, 4 or 8 RM (rep maximum). The thought process is that once a trainer or coach has a baseline measurement of a given athletes strength capacity, they can deduce two specific things:

The strength gain(s) that an athlete will see following a training program (because inevitably they will re-test the athlete at the conclusion of there 6 or 8 week training cycle).

The percentage of absolute strength the athlete can and should perform their training programs (for example, if a 1RM squat equals 225 pounds, than a ‘training weight’ may be 70% of that, or 158 pounds).

Biomotor improvements (strength, speed, flexibility) are not hard to come by with young athletes and are often just as attributable to their natural adolescent maturation process as they are to any ‘cutting edge’ training program a given trainer or coach will put together. More over, as demonstrated in countless studies, detraining effects will occur in a relatively short period of time once the training program has concluded.

Pursuant to the above point, we must progress away from the ‘value-intensive’ practice of training young athletes in short bursts (6 – 8 weeks) and shift to a more long-term and ‘principal-focused’ approach to working with kids. In that, a given training program would not look to isolate and improve biomotor ability as much as it would act as a teaching agent with a focus on improving transferability to sport.

In this value to principal shift I suggest, we must also look to take pressure off of kids in general. Like it or not, if you adhere to test/re-test training programs of short durations, you are allowing that athlete to think only of the numbers and specific improvement gains. Kids should not be placed in a situation where the efficacy of their training is based on how much more they can squat in week 7 than they did in week 1.

Again, your focus as a trainer or coach should be on technical ability and improvements in this consideration. Create RTA (rate of technical ability) charts that mark how well a child is progressing from a form and function standpoint. Not only is this a more ‘teaching-based’ approach to conditioning, but it also changes the focus and mental stress for the athlete – from performance considerations (i.e. how much weight can they lift) to technical considerations (i.e. how well can they lift it).

One of the more problematic issues I have seen in this debate revolves around why a trainer or coach is testing at all.

The reason to test must be completely based on what you want to glean from the results… and most coaches and trainers don’t seem to see that clearly enough.

For example, one of the questions that was recently posed to me was in reference to a freshman baseball team (14 year old athletes). The coach told me straight out that the kids had little to no experience in terms of strength training, so testing the squat would not be a worthwhile assessment. Instead, the coach wanted to know if leg press or leg extension would be more feasible because they lack technical difficulty.

Points to consider:

If you know that the kids have no lifting expertise, than by nature of that conclusion, your role as a trainer/coach is to teach. Period. There is simply no reason to test strength capacity in a situation where the kids you are working with have no experience at all. That is part of the dogmatic thinking that must change in our youth training culture.

Leg press and leg extension are silly exercises that will do more harm than good to anyone. Specifically, lumbar rounding in the leg press and anterior sheering at the knee joint with leg extension make the risk/reward ratio of these exercises useless. Additionally, and this speaks to my statement above, what is the point of testing strength on an apparatus that you have no intension of using during training? Again, you must first ascertain why you are testing.

The reality is that in the United States, many high schools use a programming model that is based on test/re-test situations right from freshman through varsity. The notion that incoming freshman, with little to no technical ability, are being asked to perform strength assessments from day one is nothing short of ridiculous… oh… and maybe a touch dangerous as well.

Teach… Teach… Teach.

I cannot re-state that enough. Forget about testing biomotor ability and concentrate on actually teaching young athletes the skills they need to excel in sport AND be remain injury free.

Learn more about Brian’s complete system of developing young athletes – www.CompleteAthleteDevelopment.com

The Machine Myth … Get Kids OFF Those Machines

Brian Grasso is the CEO of the International Youth Conditioning Association and is considered one of the premier authorities on youth athletic development in the world. Access Brian’s free database of articles and exercises at www.DevelopingAthletics.com.

Whenever I come into contact with a coach or trainer who preaches the virtues of machine-based strength training for young athletes, the same argument is typically offered – machines are safer for kids because they eliminate the dangerous aspects of traditional free weight training. This is simply a dogmatic mindset and not founded on any scientific or functional principles. It is a classic case of blaming the exercise or activity rather than the execution. In fact, having young athletes train on machines for strength development can actually lead to injuries and a whole host of other concerning factors.

All sports are dynamic and require a great deal of systemic strength and stability to perform. More over, the strength/stability interplay needed to perform virtually any sporting activity is based on the body (or its parts) working as a unit, the way nature intended. By isolating certain muscle groups via machine-based training, you are eliminating the body’s natural capacity to provide both mobility and stability in an interrelated manner. This can essentially limit a young athlete’s ability to effectively produce force on the field of play while at the same time providing stability in other crucial areas of the body. By disturbing this innate mobility/stability balance, you are decreasing the ability of the body to protect itself during the dynamic and unscripted movements experienced during a sporting event. Coaches and trainers who incorporate machine-based training into the routines of young athletes in order to promote weight room safety are, in essence, increasing the risk of injury on the field of play. One of the primary goals of a sound strength and conditioning program is to prevent injuries during a sporting event or season – Coaches and trainers who insist on using machines for training purposes are then suggesting that trading sport safety for weight room safety is somehow a good deal.

Here is a look at some of the finer points of machine training –

• Seated vertical pressing machines place a great deal of stress on the lumbar spine – More so than standing vertical pressing exercises. In fact, many young athletes, in an attempt to press as much weight as possible, will actively hyperextend the lower lumbar in order to gain extra leverage.
• Seated leg press machines do not afford backrests that equal the natural curvatures of the spine. Additionally, many young athletes tend to overload seated leg presses with extreme amounts of weight (likely because they perceive the exercise to be ‘safe’). At increased loads during the eccentric or lowering phase of the movement, the lower lumbar will go through a forced flexion. This is a terribly unstable position for one’s lower back to be in and could result in anything from minor to severe injury.
• Hack squat machines can place a great deal of anterior shearing forces on the knee joint. Also, they tend to work primarily the quadriceps muscles and are less effective at training the critical hip extensor muscles of the posterior chain.
• Hip abduction and adduction machines allow minor to excessive spinal rotation during the movement. Here is a perfect example of the mobility/stability interplay factor that I suggested above – as you try to isolate a hip abduction exercise, for example, you will naturally ‘shift’ away from the leg in motion and experience a slight to severe degree of spinal rotation. Due to the body’s natural habits of motion, it is impossible to isolate a movement or muscle without experiencing stabilization dynamics in other parts of the body.
• Smith machines allow for vertical motion only, which is contraindicated in exercises such as the squat (an exercise that many young athletes perform on the Smith machine; again likely due to perceived ‘safety’). In good squatting form, there should be a natural forward lean while the hips are pushing back (do not misinterpret that for me suggesting that young athletes should bend or lean forward during the eccentric or lowering phase of this exercise). This allows one to maintain a sound neutral lumbar spine position and actively generate force from the powerful hip extensor muscles. With Smith machines, this natural and safe motion is eliminated completely and lumbar flexion is promoted.
• In many cases, coaches and trainers use machines in a circuit type fashion and route several young athletes at a time through a machine-to-machine type routine. Whenever young athletes are working on timed events (i.e. the coach allows for 20 – 40 seconds at each station) you can likely be assured that the athlete is attempting to get as many ‘high intensity’ reps out of his/her set as possible; often at the complete disregard of their execution. With machine or free weight strength training, perfect execution is a must – in a sense that makes machines and free weights equal in this argument. Having said that, the very unnatural nature of machines make them even more of a concern from a biomechanical safety perspective with respect to ‘timed’ training sessions or sets.

Functionality in both sport and life is based on healthy movement, certainly not isolation. In that, Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation (PNF) plays a vital role. Often noted as a type of stretching exercise, PNF is actually a diverse and intensive concept that involves movement-based stimulus following spiral or diagonal motions (to reflect that oblique nature of most muscle orientations), with the primary goal of developing motor learning through precise movements. Having said that, machine-based strength training, with its isolated format, is simply not functionally similar to innate patterns of motion that a young athlete would use on the field of play and is quite disruptive to basic physiological factors of movement such as normal timing (which refers to the naturally occurring timing of the phases of movement during a given motion).

Even with cardiovascular training, it is less than optimally productive to have young athletes use either the stationary bikes or treadmills found in most health clubs. Possessing optimal speed, agility or any other reactive locomotor ability is based largely on hip and trunk flexibility and strength. Both cycling and treadmill running serve to limit hip range of motion and can cause decreases in the dynamic flexibility within the hip complex. Young athletes are better served to incorporate rigorous sprinting or movement-base interval training (such as Fartlek) into their training routines.

Learn more about Brian’s complete system of developing young athletes -www.CompleteAthleteDevelopment.com

ACL Injuries and Female Athletes

Brian Grasso is the CEO of the International Youth Conditioning Association and is considered one of the premier authorities on youth athletic development in the world. Access Brian’s free database of articles and exercises at www.DevelopingAthletics.com

There has been an epidemic of sorts in the past few years regarding ACL injuries and young female athletes. In fact, 50,000 ACL surgeries were performed in the United States in 1982, with the majority of ACL injuries being the non-contact variety – essentially, no direct contact led to the injury itself. That statistic goes right to the heart of my concerns with young athletes. If the majority of ACL injuries are non-contact based, then either biological or mechanical issues are to blame. That is, either the injuries are due to unfortunate, yet genetic structural dysfunctions or the result of improper loading and mechanical faults – which is a matter of poor coaching.

Here is the fact – women have higher incidences of non-contact ACL injuries within the context of sporting events than do men. In fact, according to a 2000 study on this topic ‘recent reports from the National Collegiate Athletic Association institute that female collegiate soccer and basketball players were three to four times more likely to have non-contact injuries than their male counterparts.’ There simply has to be an answer accounting for why this is.

In separate studies, several factual elements of ACL injuries were shown:

1. Non-contact ACL injuries often occur with the knee at modest flexion along with a valgus motion.
2. Quadriceps contraction applies an anterior shear force on the tibia.
3. The above mentioned quadriceps contraction can cause an ACL injury if the knee flexion angle is less than 30 degrees and the hamstring musculature does not supply necessary posterior shear force (when functioning well, the hamstrings provide a counter force which pulls the tibia back from any translation forward).

Given these points and knowing that female athletes are more prone to non-contact ACL injuries, several assumptions can be made –

1. Young female athletes likely do not show as great a degree of knee flexion and yet more valgus motion than do young male athletes during athletic events and/or training.
2. Young female athletes likely have stronger anterior thigh dominance than posterior (i.e. more quadriceps involvement than hamstring involvement) during athletic events or training. This factor, of course, has influence over the anterior versus posterior shearing forces.

If these assumptions are true, and in fact basic biological factors (such as Q-angle) are not entirely to blame for this ACL epidemic, then does poor coaching play a role, at least to some degree, in the female ACL injury syndrome? For instance, referring to point #1, non-contact ACL injuries occur when the knee experiences too modest a degree of flexion and too much valgus during activities such as running, jumping and cutting – are those not mechanical issues that a qualified coach should notice and correct?

Here is what one study found when attempting to decipher these concerns (the findings were based on a observations of running, side-cutting and cross-cutting) –

1. Knee flexion angle for female athletes was lower than that for male athletes.
2. Female athletes’ knees were steadily in a valgus direction (in fact, 11 degrees more valgus than male subjects). This is a definitive problem. According to one study, the load on the ACL due to even a 5 degree motion towards valgus can increase to as much as 6 times of that when the knee is lined up properly in the frontal plane.
3. Especially during running and side cutting, female athletes experienced more dominance of the quadriceps than did male athletes.
4. Especially during running and side cutting, female athletes experienced less dominance of the hamstrings than did male athletes.

The combination of points #3 & 4 indicate a strong concern. While the increased quadriceps activation does not necessarily infer an anterior shear, the combination of an increased quadriceps force coupled with decreased hamstring activation will most certainly increase the likelihood of anterior shearing on the tibia through the patella tendon.

The point is that female athletes tend to incur knee motions during activity that are typical for experiencing non-contact ACL injuries.

Here is where the debate and argument gets heated for me. I have been an outspoken critic for years on the ‘quick fix’, ‘short term’ training approach that many trainers and facilities implement with younger athletes. When you are young and athletic, getting is shape for the upcoming season, improving your vertical jump in 6-weeks, adding 25 pounds to your bench and being able to run at 20 MPH on those high speed treadmills should be distant concerns in contrast to developing fundamental, multi-joint and systemic strength, learning movement economy (or the most efficient means of running, changing direction etc) and perfecting safe and biomechanically sound movement patterns. A study on the ‘jumping & landing techniques in elite women’s volleyball’ concluded brilliantly that ‘concerning technique, athletes who regularly perform landings and are exposed to the concurrent large impact forces should concentrate on performing landings using a toe-heel contact pattern with greater knee flexion.’

What a novel concept! Actually TEACH young athletes the technique of how to run, jump, land and move BEFORE you program endless numbers of drills and exercises.

Therein lies the crux of my concern – far too many trainers and facilities make the erroneous error of trying to maximize the ability of a young athlete as it relates to performance markers (such as vertical jump) rather than advocating for a developmental approach to improvement that is founded on fundamentals and basics. In doing so, these trainers are dampening the potential success a young athlete may achieve down the road, and compounding the problem of injury potential rather than easing it.

Here is an example of how you would teach a squat, for example, to a young female athlete –

Four Step Process –

1. Foot Position – I typically start with feet shoulder width apart and toes pointing straight ahead. Once the athlete is comfortable with the exercise, we can explore other comfortable positions.
2. Lift In-Step – I don’t want this to sound as though I have young athletes ‘remove’ their in-steps completely off the ground, but we instill the notion that they need to be performing the squat exercise by ‘pushing’ through the outside portion of their heels. This accomplishes a couple of things: a) the issue of knee valgus is removed b) hip, knee and ankle alignment is guaranteed.
3. Set Eyes & Head – When the eyes are down, the head and upper torso will follow. This causes a forward motion during the eccentric phase and causes both an anterior force through the knee as well as misalignment of the cervical, thoracic and lumber spine.
4. Push Hips Back – first time squatters and young athletes who were poorly guided will often automatically descend into the squat with an anterior motion (i.e. weight on the toes). By actively pushing the hips back, we are promoting more hip extension during the concentric phase of the squat and therefore higher activation of the hamstrings and glutes with proportionately less quadriceps involvement, consequently reducing anterior shearing forces at the knee joint.

Some, and in many cases all, of the steps in the preceding sequence can be used to teach several lower body exercises including single leg squats, step-ups, lunges and side steps.

One of the most important factors to understand is that squatting, long considered by many to be an ‘unsafe’ exercise, is actually a critically important progressive action that aids in teaching the fundamental movement patterns associated with preventing ACL injuries.

Learn more about Brian’s complete system of developing young athletes – www.CompleteAthleteDevelopment.com

Strength Training and the Young Athlete: A Final Thought on the Endless Debate

Brian Grasso is the CEO of the International Youth Conditioning Association and is considered one of the premier authorities on youth athletic development in the world. Access Brian’s free database of articles and exercises at www.DevelopingAthletics.com.

Should pre-adolescent kids lift weights or shouldn’t they? Will it stunt their growth or increase their likelihood of future sporting success? Is growth plate damage a real concern or merely an exaggerated issue?

This debate has raged on for years.

Hopefully, this article will help clear up some of the concerns.

To start, there are definitive differences between adolescent boys and adolescent girls with respect to strength and strength production. In boys, absolute muscular strength (the greatest amount of force an individual can produce) grows consistently between the ages of 7 – 19. In girls, strength gains are incurred on a consistent level until about the age of 15, when a period of stagnation occurs and strength gains plateau, and in fact begins to fall. By the end of the pubescent ages, boys are roughly 50% stronger than girls.

There are several factors to consider when programming strength training for young athletes –

1. Central Nervous System Maturity – The true argument with respect to children and weight lifting should not be based on the maturity (or in this case immaturity) of the child’s muscular system, but rather the advancement of the child’s CNS. Within proper application of load, volume and intensity, a child’s muscular system will not be compromised by weight training activities. However, a lack of motor control (a function of the CNS) will affect the child’s ability to perform weight-training exercises safely. It is therefore the maturity of the CNS that is the ultimate determining factor.
2. Cross Section Of Muscle – A larger muscle infers a greater strength potential. While hypertrophy of this sort is not hormonally possible with pre-adolescent athletes, this fact is why I advocate that early adolescent athletes train with hypertrophy-based responses in mind.
3. Biological Maturity – Biological age, unlike a child’s chronological age, is not actually visible. Biological age is based in large part to the “physiological development of the various organs and systems in the body” (Bompa, 2000). For example, the adequate development of bone, the efficiency of the heart and lungs to transport oxygen; these are examples of items that comprise biological age. This becomes important when determining the volume or intensity of the training program for the young athlete.
4. Hormonal Issues – Androgenic (muscle building) hormones are low in pre-adolescent athletes. This means that hypertrophy-based responses are all but impossible. Strength gains, however, are very possible.
5. Technical Issues – Providing a proper foundation of the technical merits of strength training is paramount when working with youngsters.

On the argument of effectiveness, adequately programmed strength training has shown considerable positive effects with regards to pre-adolescents. A study quoted by Dr. Drabik in his wonderful book, “Children & Sports Training” shows a 40% increase in strength for boys and girls (aged 10 – 11) following a nine-week strength-training program. In terms of danger or contraindication, the greatest concern lies in ligament or bone damage. Elastic, young skeletons and connective tissue can be injured if loads are excessive. That follows the mantra that with kids, loads must be kept low and proper form strictly followed.

Of interesting note is the argument regarding strength training and stunted growth. In the event of bone or growth plate damage (which is unlikely during strength training if the program is designed correctly), growth can in fact be stunted. But, if proper strength training parameters are prescribed, than the opposite is true. Muscle pull (which refers to the tension or ‘tugging’ where the muscle attaches to the bone and is incurred during muscle contraction), is a significant factor that stimulates bone thickness. More over, ‘intermittent use of submaximal resistance stimulates height growth’ (Drabik, 1996).

One keynote point that I have preached endlessly is the fact that an orthopedic assessment MUST precede any strength training prescription. Postural defects can be made worse by incorrect application of strength training, and conversely improved by correct application. An assessment is a mandatory pre-cursor to any child’s strength-training program.

Here is a list of exercises to do with young athletes –
(Dr. Drabik adopts this list from “Children & Sports Training”).

The exercises in this list get progressively more difficult. Start younger athletes on the earlier exercises, and progress them systematically over the years.

1. Obstacle courses, rope pulling, climbing
2. Vertical strength (standing push-ups), hanging exercises
3. Bodyweight exercises and medicine ball based activities/throws
4. Horizontal strength (push-ups, pull-ups)
5. Dumbbell & barbell exercises
6. Single leg squats, deadlifts, step-ups, good mornings

Learn more about Brian’s complete system of developing young athletes – www.CompleteAthleteDevelopment.com