A Few Fallacies of Youth Fitness
Fallacies
Children shouldn’t strength train.
The body supposedly is not ready for it. It’s still growing and developing. Growth and development are exactly why children should be strength training. Once upon a time there were these things outside called playgrounds. There were apparatuses named: slides, swings, monkey bars and teeter-totters. You’d swing as high as you could then jump out to land on the sand. Sometimes, those of us with enough skill, or fearlessness or stupidity, would see how far we could jump backward. There used to be climbing ropes and these metal things that looked like igloo skeletons. Then there was the thing you’d grasp with both hands while sliding to the other side and hoping you don’t fall off. Yeah, they used to be playgrounds. Now they’re Ninja Warrior courses and Spartan race obstacles. And now we, the folks who did all that stuff, will not allow our children the same freedoms. Sure, we had broken arms and legs and sprained ankles and probably had concussions – but just don’t remember them. Folks, our bodies went through a systematic process of performance. We tried things, in the absence of parental supervision, that allowed physical and motor control/patterning progress. All of that was more dangerous than structured strength and conditioning.
Children shouldn’t do external-load resistance training.
It stunts their growth - or so we’ve been told. Folks, growth is hereditary. Affecting the body with natural physical stresses, doesn’t affect a child’s genetic height potential. Quite often the external-load work that gets done uses less force that the “fun” children have running and jumping and playing. There is nothing we know of – outside of baseless hyperbole – that suggests external-load resistance training is evil.
Lifting weights leads to growth-plate damage.
No research has supported this. In fact, researchers found childhood and adolescence were great times bone modeling and remodeling that happens “in response to the compressive forces of strength training” (Faigenbaum, 2009). Playing sports such as golf, baseball, softball, tennis bowling … sports that have a lot of the same repetitive motion – sometimes vigorously – poses a great threat to growth plates than lifting weights and training.
There’s no testosterone, so why train, they’re not going to get stronger?
This might be the biggest fallacy here, and possibly the one most harmful to ensuring greatness in future athletics. First, though, we need to define strength so we’re talking the same language. C.L.A.Y. defines strength in simple terms: the ability to move heavy stuff. Sometimes that heavy stuff is the body’s weight. Other times it’s the body plus external weight.
Primary youth strength gains should first come because of neuromuscular facilitation or the brain’s ability to make the muscles do what they should and the sequence in which they should do it – all through bodyweight exercises. This is important throughout adolescence, but possibly never more than during the pre-pubertal neuronal explosion.
This is an expansive period of neural growth that preceded that burst of physical growth. Mental growth is stupid-huge during that time. If you want to teach your kids four languages, throw concepts of abstract design and linear algebra at them, it’s at this point where their brains are more accepting of the concepts. Likewise, if we want to teach them complex and dynamic movement patterns, this will be one of the best times to do it. Not the only time, because neuronal plasticity persists into adulthood – but it’s one of the best times.
Weight training increases the injury risk.
Nope again. There is a higher chance of getting hurt playing sports that preparing to play the sport (Faigenbaum 2012). Want to be as clear about this as possible – THE HUMAN BODY, NO MATTER THE AGE, IS ASKING FOR INJURY IF SWINGING A CLUB OR A BAT OR A RACKET OR A STICK IS THE MOST INTENSE THING THAT BODY DOES ON A DAILY OR WEEKLY BASIS.
The golf swing, a baseball swing, throwing a pitch or pass, cutting into the side of a snow bank or landing a 1080 reverse ollie with an inverted tail grab (yeah, I just made up that), all put more acute force on the joints, tendons, bones and muscles than lifting weights.
I’m certainly not saying we should stop children from doing these things. In fact, we should be doing them more! Only, we should be preparing the children’s bodies to do all of these things with efficiency.