Four Exercises That Don’t Belong In Youth Strength & Conditioning

If you’re a parent and have access to the internet and social media, you likely could be overwhelmed very quickly about the new exercises and training tools available to you to develop a training plan for your child.

The truth is, everyday there is someone online posting a new exercise or a new way to do the exercise. Sadly, none of these are new and generally speaking, if they are, you likely shouldn’t be doing them. In youth training, there should be an extra asterisk next to everything given the stages of development in children. Your child doesn’t need new exercises performed on questionable implements in the name of “sports specific training.”

These exercises are ones that might have a purpose, but in the sense of youth athletic development, the risk-to-reward ratio isn't favorable. Most exercises can have benefits in some context, but we’re focused on the context of youth strength and conditioning and development.

For the sake of this article, we will focus on children in the elementary and middle school age range with little to no exposure to strength training.

Max Effort Training: This is going to confuse people. I get it, I’ve competed in powerlifting at the highest level, so why not let young athletes max out? I think there is a great answer to that. Does it matter?

Really sit and think about what we’re trying to achieve (youth athletic development) and how increasing absolute strength as a main focus during a time where the main focus is increasing relative strength, coordination, endurance, etc. Keep your max effort training in reserve once a base is established. This will prove to be way more beneficial than seeing what a 13 year old can on bench press for a max.

Think about this: during this period, many kids have instability due to growing rapidly and not having ample relative strength. So, let’s say you have a 13 year old softball pitcher. This girl is still growing and likely doesn't have a lot of shoulder stability between growing so fast and being an overhead athlete. Now, it doesn't make sense to force a max bench press on this athlete that doesn't have stability in their shoulder. Sub-max training serves a much higher purpose for middle school athletes. They will gain muscle and they will gain strength, but we need to address things in an order that is sensible. 

Isolation Exercises: In this stage of development, we’re trying to teach athletes to move their body together to be optimal. Doing extra curls isn’t helping that. During this time, we’re focusing on the gross movement and exercises that will cover the most with the least expenditure.

Obviously, if in a rehab setting, this will likely be different. For instance, we will teach athletes to squat to a box with their own bodyweight instead of doing leg extensions. We will teach them to do planks, dead bugs, pallor holds before they do a sit-up. We will work on push-ups teaching them to move their body away instead of a chest flye. Athletics and life aren’t isolated and segmented, so we need to teach the body from the start to move as such. 

Wall Sits: They’re just a waste of time. People have athletes do these and it’s mind-boggling. This position isn’t relative to anything to help in sports. Athletes will compensate by pushing into the wall for support, which is the opposite of loading the posterior chain, something that is actually needed in sports. This is a lazy approach to make athletes tired and sore, but yields no benefit to their development. 

Burpees: This falls in line with the wall sits. There is no benefit to jumping up and down in a fatigued state. These are used for conditioning and as a punishment exercise. We shouldn’t be using exercise as a punishment tool. Exercise is meant to be a positive, but when we use it as punishment we begin to associate exercise as something negative and almost avoid it.

This isn’t the goal. As for burpees having carryover to any sport, I haven’t seen it and it’s just a lazy time filler. An exercise needs to be able to progressed or regressed, and quantified in effectiveness (faster times, more weight on bar, etc). 

There are many more that could make the list, but these are some of the biggest repeat offenders. The youth development time is so crucial and there is far too many people focused on all the wrong goals of a solid training session. If you have questions about how to design a youth training plan, feel free to email nick@showtimestrength.com.

Nick Showman

Showtime Strength & Performance

www.showtimestrength.com