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In barbell training, a coach meets people of all different walks of life. The spectrum is broad – young and old, genetically gifted and physically challenged. It’s been my experience that children age 8–15 are some of the most challenging people to coach.
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“Essentially, you’re molding the kid into a strong, responsible, and critically-thinking individual. This is very important not only to the kid, but to society.”
Chase young man you get it on many levels.
Not only strength but you understand the big picture. May more kids grow up into young men like you.
Hello,
My brother and I are currently training (at least, attempting to train) a friend that came to us wanting to get bigger and stronger. We're huge advocates of the Starting Strength method and knew right away that it is exactly what he needed. Chase's article pretty much describes our dilemma perfectly, he is fifteen years old, stacks up to about 5'9", and merely weighs 100 pounds. His biggest issue is controlling the lumbar spine, and he is pretty weak in general. The article definitely shed some light on the issue, however, I still have a few questions. We've watched Rip's video about controlling the lumbar spine and Nick Delgadillo's two videos regarding the same issue and have employed these tactics. It seems as though our trainee can consciously control his lumbar most of the time. I am assuming that complete, consistent control of the lumbar is something that just takes time and practice.
That being said, my brother and I both believe that his lumbar is simply not strong enough to hold itself in rigid extension through the entirety of the movements. Specifically, the squat and deadlift. He can squat the empty bar pretty well with an extended back, but as soon as a little weight is added, he struggles greatly to keep his back flat, and it curves into severe flexion. The same is true for the deadlift, even with the bar resting on the pins in the rack since we've discovered he cannot get into the correct position with the bar on the floor. He can get his back relatively flat prior to the pull (with the help of our tactile and verbal cues), but it completely loosens up as soon as his arms bears the full weight of the bar.
Our main concern is where do we go from here? We've already spent several sessions with him just trying to get his form right. Chase is right, training kids can be frustrating. Our gym does not have lighter bars, so are there other exercises we could have him do in the meantime, such as the leg press as the article mentions, to put a little meat on his bones and give The Program another go in a few weeks? What about exercises for his low back? What would this short-term program look like? Do we just continue to have him squat/deadlift the empty bar session after session until he gets it right? Any help regarding this issue and what our approach should be is much appreciated. Thanks in advance for taking time to read this post and respond.
Ryan
I think he is having trouble paying attention to your coaching. It may be he needs somebody else yelling at him. There is a weight at which he can keep his back flat -- I can find it. If you can't, it may be time for intervention.
Rip,
I think you are right. My brother and I came to a similar conclusion that there was little else we could do at this point since we do not have a lot of experience coaching. Thanks again for your response.
Ryan
Nice article Chase. I will start incorporating more tactile cues.
I have the fortune of coaching a 12 year old girl who shows up every time, listens, and tries her best, but she has a hard time controlling her body. She's gotten better with practice, but on every rep I don't know if I'm going to get perfection or shaking and three axes of asymmetry.
In your experience, how long does this take to go away in this population? With my adult lifters, they go from bambi walking for the first time to rock solid in about three to five workouts.
I really enjoyed this article.
My 13yr old son recently began lifting barbells with me. He's always played a sport and has exercised regularly doing calisthenics, running, etc. so he knows how to work hard and listen. Roughly 4 months ago when my son turned thirteen, we bought a 25lb barbell and we started the SS program in my garage gym.
What I would like to note is that I had no expectation of the program’s success due to Tanner 5 not being reached, but since he's going into 8th grade, I know kids will be lifting in the school gym and I wanted him to be comfortable and familiar with the weight room.
As far as I am concerned, THEY are doing it all wrong and WE are doing it right and there was no way I was going to let my son walk into that weight room not knowing how to lift.
Keep in mind, I'm not trying to train a national champion. My goal is that my son experiences ALL the benefits that I have from barbell training.
Neither of us are in a rush; consistency and appreciation of hard work are what I hope my son learns. I do not care at all what weights he lifts, he might, but I do not.
I believe this is what’s important at this age and what separates me from most fathers. Probably because I can squat 405 for sets across and they cannot.
To Chase’s point in the article, kids have a very short attention span and their phones/ipads, etc. are making it worse. By lifting in my garage and going through the session in a circuit I was able to have the total training session completed in 15min or so. He doesn’t need the long rest breaks I do, and by making it short it never becomes a chore. It’s just something we do before we go get something to eat, party, shopping, whatever.
What we attempted to do is train every day. Now this isn’t a reality due to sports, vacations, parties, sleepaway camps, etc., but by structuring it this way we were able to train quite a bit and the goal of being consistent was met. The training frequency inadvertently helped nail down the form. We experienced the same dive bombing during the squats that Chase observed. In our experience the daily sessions helped alleviate this – not so much the cues. This was evident in any weeklong lapse from training where not only did we experience a significant drop of strength, but form breakdowns also occurred.
Fortunately, it would only take roughly 3 sessions to get the form back on track and get back to previous strength levels.
Loading: We loaded the bench and squats 1lb at a session. That’s it. There is no possible way at this age he could add 5lbs 3x a week or even once a week. But we learned that he can micro load 1lb a session for quite some time.
Our first session he squatted 3x5 just the 25lb bar and he was sore for a few days. Now he’s squatting 3x5 @ 70lbs and he hasn’t been sore since we started. The bench went from a wonky 3x5 @ 25lbs to 3x5 @ 55lbs. His DL went from 1x5 @ 75lbs to 105x5.
Shoulder Presses: To be honest, I’m not very good at coaching them. We tried barbell shoulder presses, but he hurt his back the 1st week of training them and so I switched him over to standing dumbbell presses and he went from 3x10 @ 10lbs to 3x15@ 15lbs. The 20lb dumbbells will not budge. I do not have the ability to micro load our dumbbells, so I decided to just increase the number of reps one rep at a time.
Cleans: He has managed to clean 55lbs for sets of 3. I can’t coach these very good either. I love cleans and at some point, I’m going to have to bring him to a SS coach to team him. Make no mistake he can do them, but I don’t like the way he catches the clean and I’m concerned that he’s going to hurt his back because of my inability to coach the lift. I can coach the squat and DL very well, but I struggle with presses and cleans.
Another observation is that regular PRs are really helping drive the motivation. I make the biggest deal of 1lb PRs, and you can see the satisfaction of having gotten better than last time. I’m not a real coach, my job is to set the stage and be a cheerleader. I believe this is also one of the reasons it’s never a chore.
I started lifting weights later in life when I was 20 yrs. old. I discovered SS when I was 32 and haven’t really looked back. I know for a fact my life would have been 10x better if I started doing this at his age. My goal is for him to fall in love with training just like I did, and by removing any pressure of hitting certain weights I believe I am doing so.
