Should My Kid Be Lifting Weights?
Life’s Peachy FIT | For Our Members & Community
Mark’s son is 13, plays footy and basketball, and has just started asking whether he can “do weights.”
Mark’s instinct is no. Somewhere in the back of his head is a thing he heard at some point, from someone, that lifting weights stunts your growth. Damages the growth plates. Makes you bulky and slow. That kids should just play sport and leave the gym until they’re older.
Mark is a good dad asking a sensible question, and the honest answer, backed by essentially every major sports medicine and strength and conditioning body in the world, is that the thing he heard is wrong. Properly coached resistance training is not only safe for kids and teenagers, it’s one of the best things they can do for their sport, their long-term health and their injury risk.
I’ve spent the last several years coaching strength and conditioning for youth AFL and basketball athletes, including in club development programs and school academies. I’ve watched a lot of 13-year-olds pick up a bar for the first time. Here’s what I’d tell Mark.
Where the myth came from
The “stunts your growth” belief traces back to a handful of case reports from the 1970s and 80s involving growth plate injuries in adolescents. The injuries were real. They also, almost without exception, involved unsupervised kids lifting weights they had no business lifting, with no technique, often at home. The lesson that should have been drawn was “don’t let children max out unsupervised.” The lesson that actually spread was “weights are dangerous for kids.”
The research since then has been consistent and one-directional. Position statements from the National Strength and Conditioning Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Australian Strength and Conditioning Association and others all reach the same conclusion: supervised, appropriately programmed resistance training is safe for children and adolescents, does not harm growth plates, and does not affect final height. Injury rates in coached youth strength programs are lower than in most of the sports those kids are already playing. A season of junior footy carries considerably more risk than a season of coached lifting.
The growth plate concern actually cuts the other way. Loading bone through resistance training in the years before and during puberty is one of the most effective stimuli for building peak bone mass, which is largely set by the early twenties and determines skeletal health for the rest of life.
What it does for a young athlete
For a kid playing sport, the case is stronger still.
It reduces injury. This is the big one, and it’s the reason every professional sporting club has a strength program for its academy players. Stronger muscles and tendons absorb force better. Better movement patterns mean the knee tracks properly on landing, the hamstring copes with sprinting, the shoulder tolerates contact. Structured strength training in adolescents reduces sports injury rates substantially, and for some injuries, particularly ACL tears in teenage girls, targeted programs cut the risk by more than half.
It improves performance. Speed, jumping, change of direction, kicking distance, the ability to hold a position under contact. All of it sits on a foundation of strength and coordination that sport alone doesn’t fully develop. The kids who lift, properly, get faster and more powerful. The kids who don’t tend to plateau physically around 15 or 16 while their teammates keep improving.
It teaches movement that sport doesn’t. Most kids can’t squat, hinge or brace properly, not because they’re weak, but because nobody’s ever shown them. Those patterns are the basis of nearly every athletic movement. Learning them at 13 with a light load is far easier than learning them at 25 with a sore back.
It builds confidence. The thing coaches see most often, and parents mention most often, is what happens to a kid’s self-belief when they get measurably stronger at something. It transfers. To the sport, to school, to how they carry themselves.
What “properly” means
The word doing all the work in every sentence above is “properly.” Here’s what it means.
Supervision by someone who knows what they’re doing. Not a mate, not a YouTube program, and not an unsupervised corner of a commercial gym. A coach with a background in youth strength and conditioning, who understands that a 13-year-old is not a small adult.
Technique before load. The first weeks, sometimes months, are bodyweight and very light loads while the movement patterns are built. A kid who can squat beautifully with a broomstick is ahead of one who can grind out a heavy rep badly. Weight goes up only when technique has earned it.
No maxing out. Youth programs don’t test one-rep maxes. Loads are kept in ranges where technique can be maintained for every rep. The heavy, grinding, single-rep lifting that people picture is not part of it.
Programmed around growth. Adolescents grow in spurts, and during a spurt coordination goes backwards for a while as the limbs get longer faster than the brain can recalibrate. A good youth coach sees this and adjusts, rather than pushing through it.
Around sport, not on top of it. A kid playing two sports and training twice a week at school doesn’t need four lifting sessions. One or two well-programmed sessions a week, timed to sit away from games, is the right dose for most.
When to start
Later than you’d think in load, earlier than you’d think in movement.
Most position statements put the starting point for structured resistance training at around 7 or 8, provided the child can follow instructions and the program is appropriate, which at that age means bodyweight, games, and movement skills, not barbells. Meaningful external loading typically becomes appropriate in the early teens, with real strength development accelerating through and after puberty.
For Mark’s 13-year-old, the answer is: yes, now, with a coach. He’s at the ideal age to learn to move well before the growth spurt makes everything harder, and the years between 13 and 17 are where the injury-prevention and performance benefits compound most.
What we do
Mark’s son started with us at 13. He’s not bulky. He’s not slow. He’s faster than he was, he’s stronger, more durable & more confident in contests, and hasn’t missed a game through injury in two seasons. He’s also 4cm taller than his dad, which settles the growth question fairly conclusively.