Training Program for 13 year old

[hgboulos]

Hi Coach,

I've been following the brand and program for many years now myself. My son is 13 and going into the 8th grade and he's a competitive basketball player. He's working very hard at the skills portion of the sport and is focused on earning more playing time next season. We decided to start him on a strength program this summer and I wanted to quickly ask if you felt this current work load is the right amount for his age.

We're doing 3 workouts per week. Day 1 - squat + press, Day 2 - deadlift, Day 3 - squat + bench press. Each day we're doing 2-3 workup sets on the main lifts and then 3x5 work sets across. We do a few assistance exercises like chins, rows and box jumps. Overall we complete the workouts in 30-40 minutes. I've not introduced the power clean as I'm less confident in my ability to teach this lift and thought to keep it simple for now and focus on the other major lifts.

Please let me know your thoughts on this amount of work and if you have any specific articles or content about training young teenager's for the first time. We've been adding weight to the bar each week and we're being responsible and focusing on great technique. It would be great to hear your thoughts about this subject on the podcast. I think were doing the right thing and as you can imagine I'm hearing a lot of...he's too young and all.

Thank you,

Henry

[Mark Rippetoe]

Can You Put Your Kids on a Strength Training Program? | Mark Rippetoe

[hgboulos]

Thanks Coach! And the point of the eccentric portion of the lift makes sense. I find in the bench and press, the bar can drift on him during the eccentric portion. Better on the squat, best on the deadlift. I've not heard of that Tanner scale but will check it out.