Too young for Novice LP

Hi all, Rip recently responded to my question on the podcast relating to training a young Male. In my question I stated that he is 13 and Rip advised that until Tanner stage 4 training cannot truly take place.

Since submitting the question the trainee has turned 14 and I am confident he is in tanner stage 4. However I fully appreciate why Rip gives this advice and I can see that it would be really difficult for him to recover to a novice lp.

However, this trainee comes to me when his older brother comes to train and is really keen on getting stronger and more importantly to him, bigger. He also gets a lot out of the time with his brother and me and I dont want to tell him he can no longer attend.

I would love to know what suggestions you might have for what to do with him when he's here. He wants to lift weights, so should I get him to do light work for him and work on form, or would a less aggressive program that sees him add weight gradually as he grows be more appropriate.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give!

If he wants to train he will find a way to train. Even if it will be unsupervised and dumbest program ever- he will train. So it will be good for him to train under the eye of the coach. Just explain it to him why he might not progress as fast as his older brother. You don't want him discoureged.

What you should do is put him on the program and progress his weights slowly. See how he responds. He might be still to young for about 1-1,5 year. Talk to him about importance of what and how much he eats. Try to teach him patience and consistency.

I've traind in weightlifting club in Poland and from my observation I can tell that strength starts to go up lightning fast at around 16-17 years of age. I've seen kids struggling with 45-50kg snatch @60kg body weight and one year later they were snatching around 100 kg @70kg body weight. Best one at the age of 18 had 145kg snatch and 160-170kg C&J - gifted kid.

Thanks Szymon, I appreciate your response. I should have made it clearer that I am far from a coach. I have helped a few guys who wanted to do a novice lp but they have all been studs in their twenties, so anybody could have done that for them. I have only had to think about intermediate programming for myself.

As such I'm unsure of how to structure what he does in order for him to progress slowly. Most coaches I have read do not advise microloading the squat and deadlift, but as he has not run through novice lp it seems preemptive to use intermediate programs for him.

At this point I am planning on just getting him to play around with light weights and work on form. If access to an actual coach was possible I would advise him to do that. However it seems a shame for him to just exercise and not train solely because I dont know how to structure his program in a way that doesn't wreck him.

If you have any ideas on how to set up his workouts so that he can progress at a managable rate I would really appreciate it, or do you feel just getting him to play around for another year or so is the right call?

I have a 2 ideas for you.

1) if he wants to come 2 days a week. First day you do squat and bench, other day press and deadlift. You start him light and progress 5 lbs in squat and deadlift, microload press and bench. He should do only 1x5 work set, maybe a bit longer warmup to correct the form at the begining to compensate lack of 3 work sets. If you want to slow his progress more then insted adding wheigth you can add one more set of 5 and than, next week you can add 5lbs for single set of 5.

2) 3 days a week. You could do only one lift per day. So on monday you squat, wednesday- press/bench, friday- deadlift. On squat and deadlift day you can do some pressing bodyweight movment like pushups etc to make up for only one day of press a week. Throw in some chinups on monday and maybe some barbell curls on friday- he probobly wants those pointy peak biceps ASAP. This will keep him entertained

General notes:
- he have probobly alot going on in school and his kid life. He needs to be able to recover from all of that. Take it easy.
- every healthy 17 yo kid is stronger than he was at 14yo. So barbell training is just a little push in right direction. For now.
- he needs to eat. Alot.
- the best thing you can do for him is teach him patience and consistency. Extremely hard for teens. The ones that can do this usually end up very succesfull in their field of intrests.
- use bodyweight movment as a motivation driver. Maybe now he can do 10 pushups and 5 chins. Try to double it by the and of the year. You don't want him to go for his 1RM squat to show progress but max out at chins ? Why not. It will give him something to look forward to as a reward for his struggle. Just don't do this every week.

I took my son to a SS Squat and DL Camp, he was 14 at the time. I checked with the coaches beforehand. He had been training with me, not consistently, but really wanted to squat and DL properly.

He loved the camp. Thought the SSCs were great. And the encouragement he got was outstanding. And I wanted him to learn the lifts correctly.