Strength Training for Youth Athletics and Running: Is It A Good Idea?

There has long been the notion that strength training for youth athletes is a bad idea. What if it stunts their growth? What if it reduces their sport performance? What if they suffer long-term consequences from excessive strength training today?

These are extremely valid concerns and we certainly want the best for our children. But we can’t completely ignore strength training for youth athletes, because if we do, their strength improvements could fall behind those of their peers. This could then limit their ability to get noticed by college coaches and eventually make it to the professional level. But it needs to be done the right way.

Consider the loveable childhood character, Bambi, and his friend, Thumper. When Bambi tries to run onto the ice for the first time, what happens? He falls down and has a hard time standing back up. Thumper, much more comfortable on the ice, pushes Bambi’s legs to get Bambi back to standing. While this is briefly successful, Bambi continues to have a hard time standing up and is unsuccessful walking on the ice.

I don’t know about you, but when I was a child, I started off learning to crawl, then to walk, and finally to run. I was fortunate to grow up in a house that didn’t have ice for floors, which I’m sure sped up the learning process. But all of this growth is connected to motor control; your neurophysiological system is learning how to communicate between your brain, spinal cord, nerves, and muscles, to ultimately produce repetitive, exact movement. Without motor control, you cannot progress.

Back to Bambi. Bambi knows how to walk on solid ground! So why can’t he walk on the ice? Because his motor control with basic walking and trotting on solid ground is built into his foundation; he has experienced, through trial and error over the years, how to coordinate his body to adequately move towards its goal. He does not have this experience with walking on slippery surfaces. When solid ground is replaced with ice, he is left without a leg to stand on (sorry…).

With practice, children eventually learn how to move more efficiently; they minimize the extraneous arm and leg movements with running and they learn to slow themselves down without falling over. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, they go through puberty! They grow taller and get heavier, and the foundations of their motor control go out the window. They now have longer limbs and maybe even some growing pains to contend with, and so they must re-learn how to move efficiently in relevance to their sport.

I see youth athletes all the time in my physical therapy practice who want to “get stronger”. However, when they do a basic body weight squat, for example, their knees buckle and their back is excessively flexed. Why would I want them to improve their strength in the corresponding muscles if their movement pattern is poor? Hint: I wouldn’t.

It becomes a question of priority. I like to be absolutely sure that the foundational motor control of young athletes is great before I recommend strengthening muscles with squats, lunges, bench presses, etc. Otherwise, they’ll be teaching their bodies that it’s ok to move poorly. That then predisposes them to serious orthopedic injuries. I’d much rather work to prevent an ACL tear than help an athlete with their recent ACL reconstruction surgery (though I enjoy this, too!).

In my practice, I start with the basics of human movement relevant to an athlete’s sport. If they are a soccer player, we focus on engaging the lateral glutes to coordinate hip and knee movement during running, cutting, jumping, and kicking tasks. If they play baseball and are concerned about throwing, I look at the relationship between the shoulder and shoulder blade, the thoracic spine, and the hips and lower body balance, because a breakdown in any of these locations can limit movement efficiency. In running, its more about the thousands of repetitions and making sure we maximize motor control with each step to minimize repetitive use injuries. These relationships are complex but essential.

Strength training is great! Strength training in youth athletes is great! With the Charlotte FC Academy, age 12-13 is generally when we allow athletes to begin proper strength training programs. But even at this age, if an athlete is struggling with their motor control and basic movement patterns, they are pulled from strength and conditioning work. We must first make sure that the foundation is there because you can’t build a sandcastle on water. And our poor friend Thumper was fighting a losing battle with Bambi on his first day on the ice.