Daughter starting lifting

[Dennis D]

My 8 year old daughter wants to lift so I bought her a Rogue OSO mini bar and I'm going to teach her. She has that 8-year old girl flexibility that makes your body hurt just watching. My question is can she squat too low? Ass to grass is absolutely no problem for her, but should I keep her from going so low? I'm not a coach and have never helped / trained with anyone who had the ability to squat this low. Thanks in advance for any advice. - Dennis

[Michael Wolf]

One of the hardest things for kids in general, and I'd guess even more so a kid as flexible and bendy as your daughter, is teaching them to stay tight. They just flop all over the place, and in the squat, this often means a completely or almost completely uncontrolled descent. In regular playing and sports, many kids will do stuff like this all the time, but it's a different story under a load.

Additionally, you can't really "train" when you're 8. You can do the movements, and even do them regularly if you like them, but the stress->recovery->adaptation model doesn't work to the same degree as it does later.

So that said, try to teach her to stay tight. If she doesn't/can't, it's probably not any more likely to cause problems than a plethora of other activities that active kids her age do all the time, as long as you're not trying to have her run a linear progression. So, don't do that. Don't try to have her train. Teach her the movements and have her do them for fun, as play, until she gets old enough to train. She'll be easier to teach to stay tight at that point, too.

[Dennis D]

Yes, we aren't "training" but I thought it would be fun to teach her the movements if she really wants to learn them. We're working on controlled descent with success. She has scaled back gymnastic to focus on her favorite - swimming (we don't push her, but the kid wants to play every sport) - but I think her gymnastics background will give me an edge to help her understand some concepts. Anyway, I think she understands 'tight' but we'll see. Thanks for the info.