WARNING: Playground equipment stunts growth in children!

No, of course it doesn't, that is just a ridiculous statement and you probably thought that when you read it.   Yet why, on a daily basis, do I hear this same type of statement about weight training for adolescence and people tend to believe that ridiculous statement?  There is absolutely no study that shows that properly programed, supervised and periodized programming stunts growth in children.  Yet, in spite of this, the general population seems to hold on to this antiquated urban myth.  The fact is that jumping off common playground equipment causes exponentially more injuries every year than weight training in adolescence.  This makes sense too, since the forces that the body receives when jumping off the swings or doing a drop off the monkey bars is up to 5x body weight..  When you compare this to proper weight training which will only be at about 1-2x body weight for the children, then the statement that the playground equipment stunts growth in children is based on more logic than the same statement about weight training.  So why does this myth exist?  This myth exists primarily because there has been a long observance that the people who were really good at weight training were short.  People surmised that they were short because of all the weight training they did.  Well this is obviously a horrible cause/effect conclusion.  The short people lift weights more because they have shorter levers and therefore are good at weight training.  They don't become short from lifting, they turn to lifting because they are short.  Let's use this ill fated logic for other activities.  So if my son plays basketball he will be 6' 5'' because all of the professional basketball players I see on TV are about 6' 5''.   If I made this statement in a serious manner I would get laughed out of the room, yet people make the same type of statement about weight training all the time and seem to be OK with the awful logic of it.  To date the National Strength & Conditioning Association, American Pediatric Association, and American Medical Association not only condone weight training for adolescence but cite that the absence of weight training will lead to more sporting injuries in athletes that do not weight train.  A meta analysis of over 23,000 youth athletes showed that the earlier the training begins then the more likely it will be to prevent sporting injuries.  This meta analysis actually concluded that waiting until after puberty to start training for sport showed no significant ability in training to prevent injury.  So although post puberty athletes will get physically better, their poor motor patterns will already be established and you will have a stronger, injury prone athlete.   So how has this myth persisted so long with this huge body of evidence showing that not only is it safe, but it will actually keep children safer in sports than if they don't train before puberty?  We simply do not know, but we are making it our mission to educate of clients, family and friends to try to make this illogical myth go away forever.

Part of the solution though is that there must be proper supervision, progressions and technical skills taught.  Most sport coaches and parents are not qualified to design and implement a proper program for adolescence.  So we are not giving you this information so that you will buy a weight set and let your young athlete "go at it" or for you to go to your sporting coach and demand he start weight training your children to prevent injury.  This would be akin to finding out bridges are very safe and then you go out and start building bridges with no education.  What we recommend is that you find an established, certified and trustworthy professional strength coach that has lots of experience dealing with adolescent athletes.  There are basic motor patterns that must be mastered before moving on to more challenging movements.  At The Spot Athletics we start all athletes, whether they are 7 or 17 with learning the basic motor patterns first and then after mastery they progress to the next step in our performance matrix.  It takes a lot of time, knowledge of motor learning and experience to know how to properly progress young athletes to not only prevent them from injuries later in their career but make them flourish and excel in their chosen sport.

So please, if you are not in the Columbus area, find a professional and have your young athletes start training today.  If you are in the Columbus area then you need to get your young athlete to The Spot Athletics. We will help get them on their way towards becoming a much healthier and dominating athlete as they progress through puberty and the rest of their sporting career.  Lastly, if you here another parent, coach or random person state that weight training stunts the growth of children then tell them that they are not only wrong but by not letting their pre-pubescent children or athletes train, they are actually setting them up to have more injuries as they progress through puberty and into their high school career.  So the bottom line is that proper weight training doesn't injure children but this myth, that weight training stunts growth, is actually doing the opposite of it's intention and causing injuries by not letting young athletes be physically prepared for their chosen sport.  There is so much information supporting proper training for pre-pubescent athletes that we just see it as a travesty when we see young athletes career ended due to an injury that through proper strength training most likely would have prevented.  Please stop this awful cycle and share this blog with all parents and coaches that you know.

Thank you,

JL Holdsworth, BS, CSCS, USAW, TPI

Owner & Head Trainer