When properly supervised, strength training for young athletes is safe, can lead to reduced injury rates in sports, improved sports performance, and a lifetime of healthy habits. There are a number of benefits to strength training for athletes, including the potential for improved performance and also the potential for reduced injury from playing the sport. Strength training has been shown to have other benefits such as improved body composition, decreased body fat, and psychological benefits such as increased confidence. Put all of these together and those are the reasons that strength training is one of our Keys To The Game.
So what are some practical points for youth strength training?
- Make sure the young athlete is interested in strength training. This sounds pretty obvious, but I see kids in my office with injuries each week who were “forced” into strength training.
- Proper supervision is very important. I don’t like young kids performing unsupervised resistance training, especially with free weights. The risk of serious injury is too high without supervision. If your child is interested in strength training find a qualified trainer.
- Pay close attention to complaints of pain. Deal with small issues before they become big issues. Rest for a few days if there’s “discomfort” but see your pediatrician or sports medicine specialist if there’s persistent “pain”.
- Girls can benefit from strength training just as much as boys.
In the world of sports “power” is defined by the ability of a muscle group or muscle to generate the maximum amount of force in the shortest time. It’s a combination of strength and speed.
Athletes with great power are often called “explosive”. Power is Usain Bolt’s astounding 9.58 second hundred-meter dash. Power is Adrian Peterson or Chris Johnson bursting through the line before anyone can react. And power was Barry Bonds- however he seems to have gotten it- with fearsome bat speed and an ability to crush a baseball.
The best athletes in just about any sport need power to be at the top of their game. The only sports I can think of where power may not be as important are long distance events such as the marathon. Modern research on athletic power shows that the core muscle groups are most responsible for power generation. By core muscle groups we are referring to your abdominal muscles, obliques, hips, and for throwers the muscles around your shoulder blades.
So how do you get powerful? The main ways to improve your power are through movements called “plyometric” exercises. These involve bounding, jumping, rotational movements with a medicine ball, and pass/receive movements with a medicine ball. Traditional resistance training with barbells or dumbbells sometimes isolate a small number of muscle groups but plyometric training involves multiple joint movements and several muscle groups. They are designed to work the same types of groups involved in sport movements.
The term “core strength” is typically thought to include strength originating from your abdominal muscles, oblique muscles around your abdomen and your lower back. Over the years we’ve learned that the true “core” is more than that, with a strong emphasis on the muscles around your shoulder blades as well as the large muscles around your hips and pelvis. I like to think of these muscle groups as the foundation upon which body movements take place.
In the knee there is strong evidence from the work of Chris Powers, Ph.D. at the University of Southern California that the most common form of “overuse” pain around the kneecap can be greatly improved by strengthening the large muscles around the hip and pelvis.
Strengthening the core muscles can make a huge impact on athletic performance. But there are some unique aspects of core strengthening. First, we’re not just interested in strength but also balancing the strength of one side to the other. Secondly, we rarely strengthen the core by doing isolated exercises. Instead, core exercises frequently emphasize larger body movements that activate multiple muscle groups.
There are many different types of core building exercises and you should consult a qualified trainer for an individual workout that targets your particular areas of need, and sport-specific programs too. Ideally you’d want to do three sets of 8-12 reps each. There are several excellent websites that can show you photos or video of these exercises. I find the Core Performance website an outstanding resource.
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