Strength Training for Kids & Building Lifelong Movement Skills

1. Dr. Andy Galpin

   The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play, and life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University. Today we're going to be talking about exercise, and more specifically, strength training for kids. Now, I've wanted to talk about this for a long time, and it only hit me recently how ironic it is that I've never actually been asked about my views or how I interpret the research in this area in any public format.

2. Never been asked to give any scientific talks or really ever this has come up in any podcasts I've done as a guest. And that's ironic because almost nothing else has filled my inbox, my DMs, uh, my emails more than this. Now, oftentimes when I'm stopped or in public or asked from friends and family, it is questions like this. "Is it okay for my kids to lift? If so, how and when and who should I pay attention to?

3. How do I determine a quality coach? I'm, I'm all for health and exercise, but I just don't know where to get started." So whether you are in the camp of thinking, "Of course, this is great, it's a no-brainer," or you're concerned or you don't know or you're unsure, there's a lot of stuff we can unpack today. A recent publication in twenty twenty-two, not nineteen ninety-four or nineteen seventy-two, twenty twenty-two in the Journal of American Medical Association Pediatrics.

4. I want to read this quote from you directly, and you'll understand why this is still confusing to many people, whether this is consumers, parents, or even medical professionals. The paper was trying to advocate for more physical activity in kids. This is something we're all supporting. But despite that, they said, I quote, "Weightlifting is not appropriate for younger children because the strain may be too high for developing muscles, tendons, and bones." That is as untrue as we could possibly imagine.

5. The data are clear on this and specific. And so this is why we need to continue to cover topics like this. If you're already a supporter, great, awesome. Keep sharing the word. But you can have a little bit of empathy why it is confusing, again, even to medical practitioners when things like this are put out, um, in the scientific literature. We're going to cover five things today.

6. First, we're going to go over some of these common myths and misconceptions, whether they are positive and negative, so that we're all on the same page with what the current state of the evidence actually shows us. After that, I want to get into some of the documented benefits, whether these are the cognitive, mental, as in mental health, and/or physical benefits that have been associated with exercise and specifically, again, resistance exercise.

7. If you are a consistent or previous listener to the Perform podcast, you will know what I mean when I say we'll cover the three I's. If you're new, the first I we call investigate. So how do we actually measure this? And you can translate that into thinking, "Well, how do I know if my kid is moving well or moving bad? What does that even mean? What should I test? How if I-- how do I know if those scores are good?

8. How do I interpret those data?" Which would be the second I. So we'll cover common recommendations. What should you test, what should you look for, and then how do you interpret that? We'll then get into the third I, which is the intervene. In other words, what do you do about it? What are the do's and don'ts? So that's the stuff we're going to cover today when we get into all things regarding exercise and specifically strength training for kids.

Read the full transcript