Teaching Young Athletes to Strength Train 101

Ray Zingler

Over the course of the last decade or so the emphasis of strength & conditioning has trickled down from the college and professional athletic settings to middle and high school programs. This is certainly a positive, however it increases the need for qualified strength coaches. Too many times young kids are thrown into weight rooms with a coach that enjoys lifting weights or used to play a college sport. This certainly doesn’t automatically qualify a person to be in charge of teaching young athletes how to train just because they did it or like to do it. After all, you wouldn’t put a professional athlete in charge of your finances simply because he is associated with a lot of money. The same principle should go for your kids. The weight room is a fantastic place for them to be, but it’s got to be with the right type of coach. The three main components of teaching young athletes to strength train are: 1) drilling technique and progressions, 2) keeping the programs simple, and 3) motivation.

The beauty of training young athletes is that more times than not, you’re working with kids with a clean slate of nonexistent bad habits. This is the most important time to instill proper technique and movement patterns because kids can pick up on the basics rather quickly and are easily molded at a young age. Once a kid shows proficiency in a given exercise, hammer it home with repetition, repetition, more repetition, and then a little more repetition. For example, take a 7th grade athlete who has never been in a weight room before. If our goal is to teach him how to properly execute a squat, where do we start? From the bottom up. Get his feet, ankles, knees, and hips in order, and then begin by teaching a body weight squat. Once he understands the body weight squat, progress to a weighted goblet squat. Once we’ve got the weighted goblet squat down, we can then progress to a barbell squat. The period of time a brand new young athlete needs to work through these progressions is anywhere from 1-4 months minimum depending on the athlete’s age, development and ability. However, most youth “strength” coaches will demonstrate a body weight squat or two and then throw the kid under a barbell and tell him to walk the bar out and “squat.” But, what about their upper and lower body positioning, bar placement on their back, hand placement on the bar? Where does their head go, how many steps do they take to walk it out, where do their feet go, do they sit back and squat, or do they sit straight down? How do they know they are hitting depth, how do they create the most power to drive out of the hole?, Etc., etc. Not that a coach needs to make it rocket science as I believe in simplicity myself, but do some of these coaches really think a young athlete can digest everything that actually goes into a barbell squat on their first day? And no, “figuring it out as they go” is not the best method of teaching. Young athletes will have PLENTY of time to get strong over the course of their high school/college careers, but what they won’t get a do-over for is their initial experience learning how to train. They only get one of those, and it is a coach’s duty to teach them the right way.  If a kid who doesn’t know any better is training improperly, that is not on the kid, that is on the coach, every single time. I am all about coaches pushing young athletes, but it needs to be done in a calculated and methodical manner focusing on quality.

Building off of the principle of simplicity, I create all of my young athletes’ programs using the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) method. The easy thing about training young athletes with no experience is that their bodies respond to just about any stimulus and they do so rather quickly. After all of my athletes become proficient in the six fundamental movement patterns I teach: 1) Push up, 2) Bodyweight Row, 3) Hip Hinge, 4) Bodyweight Box Squat, 5) Lunge, and 6) Plank, we begin weight training. We train using the three main compound movements: 1) Squat, 2) Bench, and 3) Deadlift. To compliment our main movements we use accessory exercises to develop muscle groups that will enhance our compound movements and on top of that, we add in some plyometric exercises, medicine ball throws, and core work. That is it. There is nothing fancy about it. Too many times coaches and trainers feel the need to “wow” their clients with exercises that are extremely complex. Yes, balancing single legged on a bosu ball, wearing an altitude mask, with bands hooked up to your waist while you rub your belly and do a single arm dumbbell press may get you a few extra “likes” on instagram, but I assure you there is a more efficient way to lead the horse to water. Not to say that some of the extras don’t have their place as athletes develop and get stronger, but I promise a kid who has been training less than six months doesn’t need to be using bands, chains, or boards. Strength coaches and trainers alike working with younger athletes will get more out of focusing on the basics and ensuring quality than they ever will trying to create a complex program. When in doubt: simplify.

The final and in my opinion, most important components that go into teaching and creating strength training programs for adolescents is encouragement, motivation, and mentorship. You can have the highest quality X’s and O’s coach that knows everything and then some about creating the perfect strength training program, but if he or she has an inability to reach young people, that knowledge is all but worthless. Most parents of young athletes don’t care about the nitty gritty that goes into strength training, the different training styles, science behind set/rep schemes, or exactly how to set up a dynamic effort lower body workout. What they care about is: a) Is my child safe under your direction? b) Is he or she improving? and c) Is he/she having fun? It is now up to the qualified coach to make sure those three bases are covered. Too many times strength coaches miss the boat on component ‘C’. Many coaches feel the need to take the drill sergeant approach and yell and scream to force kids to work hard, leaving safety and oftentimes progression on the back burner. I am all about being a stern disciplinary, however, I have found that young athletes will work much harder for you once they know that you care. The weight room is a very special place. I am blessed to watch kids grow mentally and physically every single day and that is through the confidence they build within their training that translates to others areas of their lives. Do I care what their bench max is, or how many sets of deadlifts we have on the given day? Sure I do, but what do I care about more? How’s your day going? Anything I can do for you outside of here? Do you need someone to talk to? That is the stuff that really matters. Good strength coaches improve athletes in the weight room and on the field, but great ones have the ability influence them far beyond the squat rack and the white lines. Being a strength coach is a demanding 24/7/365 job, but what makes everything worth it is a text message from a 15-year-old kid telling you that you’ve changed his life. That holds more weight than any amount of money ever will and makes the 4am wake up calls that much easier.

I cannot over emphasize the importance of keeping things simple with young kids starting out. It is very easy to “see what the pros do” and want to implement what looks cool to a 16-year-old just because JJ Watt does it. Coaches with the “save some for tomorrow” approach always get more out of kids because they recognize strength training isn’t a four month sprint, it is oftentimes a lifestyle we coaches are trying to instill in young athletes. My goal is build a fitness foundation with a 16-year-old that he/she will still have when he/she is 56. This is why it is so important for kids to associate fitness in a positive light at an early age. Get a kid hurt while they are young or make training miserable and see how that translates for them 20 years down the road. Lastly, always coach young athletes from the neck up before you coach them from the neck down. Once a kid knows you care and have his or her best interests in mind, the potential is limitless. Confidence is always king and it is always a coach’s job to instill confidence.