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Youngsters Need Strength Too
by Bill Starr
Getting stronger is an advantage to anyone at any age, but particularly so for youngsters. It can completely change their conception of themselves, and this attitude will carry over to all the other endeavors they take part in as well.
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Big smile on my face for having another B.S. article to read. I'm no kid no more, but I was once, and I can see how positively impacted I've been by weightlifting.
Coach Rip, next time - if you get the chance - please tell Mr. Starr that I really enjoy his articles; I've read most of them. From Milo to Ironman, they're really wonderful, insightful, & nostalgic. Big thanks!
C.B.
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Fantastic article. My father won't let my younger brother start serious strength training as it "will do him no good". Definitely showing him this.
Also, I have to say that I really recognise myself in that article. I have always been weak and small, but I have been strength training for a little over a year now and I am getting stronger. In that same time period, I have also gone through a real growth spurt and gotten much higher. The growth spurt started right after I started strength training. Could be just a coincidence, but who knows.
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Great article by Bill Starr.
I have a 9-year old son that has expressed some interest in lifting and we're going to be staring some Olympic lifting together soon through a small club that's run through a local Y. By the time he gets to high school, he's going to be a beast!
Any other parents on the forum that have introduced their kids to lifting around this age?
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Another frickin great article!!! Can't wait till my kids finally get the weightlifting bug. I had been a proponent about letting kids decide what activities they are interested in versus parents deciding in a dictatorial style the activities the kids WILL play at all costs. But as I've matured, we have to at least guide them to activities that:
1. They enjoy or are driven to participate in versus told to
2. They are successful at learning discipline and work ethic, not necessarily the best out there
3. Reasonably safe from life devastating injuries (motocross is out)
4. Parents can reasonably afford and the activities isn't a burden on the household
I will continue to role model below parallel squats to my children working out in the basement and encourage them to join me (which they have a few times). Till then, it's still just me and the bar.
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I wish I had already embraced the obvious attributes of a sensible strength program when I used to work with kids on a regular basis... it would have been a lot easier for me and WAY more productive for them. Great article. Well spoken. Thanks.
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Bill starr is the barbell god, I wish he would have written another barbell book of some sort, heck im willing to buy 200 copies with my own money and sell them in my city
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In our household, weight lifting is now a family affair. Myself, wife, 14 and 11 year old boys. I can't even remember when last the lads ever got hurt on the rugby field
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Perfect timing! My 10 and 12 year-old-boys started SS Thursday.
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I wish this kind of stuff was around when i was young! The opportunities for passing on knowledge are fantastic now that the internet is here and my young sons and their sons will ultimately reap the benefits of this and hopefully take full advantage of this stuff that I never had available to me. Not just this article, but the whole website and all the positive spin offs that go with it. Keep up the good work!
Specifically on the article, the initial discussion on the lack of physical stimulus for children is a very valid argument. In some areas of the UK there are alot of very big men who grew up in the mining profession or in very physical foundry type environments. None of this exists any more and its very rare now to see someone who is genuinely massive. The genetics are still there in alot of families but due to the lack of physical work the end result tends to be obesity. My Grandad was a fairly stocky guy when he was working, but my dad was thinner than him and me thinner than my dad, and its down to the increasingly sedentary lifestyle that occurred over the last few generations. Naturally big people getting fatter, naturally thin people getting thinner all because there's no hard graft to be done.
Personally my parents did absolutely nothing to help me when I was little, I promise myself I wont make that mistake with my own sons (3 and 2). I don't blame my parents for it as this kind of information wasn't readily available then and the culture generally wasn't aware of it (weightlifting seen as a niche area in the UK I would say - people generally don't understand it). It seems that this is common in the US too?
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