Practical guidelines and recommended resistance exercises you can use today to improve youth muscle strength by as much as 74 percent!
Most people are aware that children in developed nations are experiencing epidemic levels of obesity, and that this problem is, in large part, associated with physical inactivity. However, the standard fitness recommendation to get more cardiovascular exercise may not be the best advice for overweight, underactive children. The fact is, very few children choose to spend 20 to 30 minutes doing any kind of continuous endurance exercise, regardless of the benefits or incentives. Most youngsters prefer to play hard or run fast for 30 to 60 seconds, rest a minute or two, then repeat their performance, essentially alternating brief bouts of vigorous exercise with longer recovery periods.
Ideally, children should have access to exercise programs that meet their physiological needs and match their personal activity patterns. Fortunately, it is possible to provide such exercise programs through sensible strength training-and the beneficial effects typically exceed most people’s expectations.
Benefits of Kids’ Strength Training
Strength training for kids not only offers many advantages over other types of exercise; it also appeals to children’s activity preference to alternate brief bouts of high-effort movement with longer periods of rest/recovery. Strength training exercises for kids also provide visual reinforcement, because young exercisers can easily see how much weight they are lifting and how much progress they have made.
One of the best features of strength training for kids is the success rate that overweight boys and girls experience. Unlike most athletic activities (e.g., running, jumping, soccer and basketball), in which extra body weight is undesirable, strength training actually favors larger youth and gives them a much-needed sense of physical accomplishment. Because the amount of weight lifted is positively related to body weight, heavier children can usually train with heavier weight loads than their lighter peers.
Here are some more compelling reasons why sensible resistance training benefits children:
Dispelling Myths & Misconceptions
Unfortunately, many people mistakenly believe that strength training is an inappropriate and unsafe activity for youth. Conceptually, this does not make sense. If strength training is safe and effective for your frail elderly clients, it is even better for healthy young people with full movement capacity and plenty of energy.
Indeed, no serious injury has ever been reported in any prospective study on youth strength training. Not only is strength training safe for kids, but it may actually help reduce the number of injuries they sustain during other physical activities. According to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), 50 percent of preadolescent sports injuries could be prevented, in large part, by enrolling kids in youth strength and conditioning programs (ACSM l993). On a more anecdotal front, we have personally conducted regular strength training classes for children 6 to 12 years old for the past 17 years without experiencing a single injury!
Some of you may have heard that strength training can be detrimental to bone development in children, but this has never been demonstrated. Again, contrary to popular opinion, strength training has been shown to enhance bone development in kids. In a 10-month study involving 9- and 10-year-old girls, bone mineral density increased by about 6.2 percent in those who performed both strength and aerobic exercise, compared to about 1.4 percent in those who did not strength train (Morris et al. 1977).
You may also have heard that for children, calisthenics exercises are safer than strength training exercises. This is likewise untrue. Most children-especially those who are underfit and overweight-cannot complete a single pull-up, bar-dip or push-up, making these calisthenics maximum-effort exercises that result in failure. However, we have found that using resistance equipment, these same kids can adjust the weight load as necessary and are able to perform 10 to 15 controlled repetitions of every exercise.
Finally, some people question whether children can gain strength and enhance muscular development in light of their low levels of testosterone. But, if this were a true limitation, then women and elderly individuals would also be unresponsive to strength training, which is obviously not the case. In fact, studies have revealed significant increases in muscle strength and mass in preadolescent boys and girls (Faigenbaum et al. 1993; Morris et al. 1997; Pikosky et al. 2002; Westcott et al. 1995). Furthermore, research has shown that these strength training effects are relatively long-lasting (Faigenbaum et al. 1996). Although some of the strength gains are due to motor learning, children add muscle tissue through increased protein synthesis, in much the same way that adults do.
