[Youth] Be Better at Sports With Strength Training

Learn How Starting Strength Training Can Benefit You

Want to play better at your sport? Tired of losing to mates? Wish to continue playing when you are older without injuries? If yes, we may have the answer……. Strength Training. Strength training is where you perform exercises with the purpose of getting stronger, faster, fitter and prevent injury.

many years, there has been many beliefs that strength training is dangerous for children. But research has now shown the opposite, with many children your age performing better, feeling stronger and being healthier through the use of strength training.

Maturity is A MUST!

When it comes to strength training you must be sensible! Just like all sports there is always a possible risk of injury but this risk can be massively reduced if you are mature and learn about strength training. Those of you who pay attention to the effects of strength training will be the ones who will improve the best!

How Strength Training Helps You

Get Strong Fast!

On average children can set a strength gain of 30-50% in as little as 12 weeks from resistance exercises. Starting strength training as a child will develop greater levels of relative strength (your strength level compared to your body weight) which serves as a great base for increasing maximal strength as you develop into adults. However, if strength training is stopped your advantage other your friends will soon disappear. Without continuing strength training benefits will gradually become less, to maintain physical advantages strength training should be performed at least once a week.  

Improves Sport Performance

Research has shown that strength training will improve physical abilities such as long jump and vertical jump as well as running speed. With strength training you will improve the abilities you train for example performing squats and various jump exercises will improve jump. Height, whereas strength speed training such as sprinting with a parachute or other form of reliance will help you before faster. This is great If you know your peer have an advantage over you, if you train your weakness it will become your strength! This transfer from strength training to the abilities you wish to improve is known as training specificity.

Reduces Injury

Sadly, playing sport with your mates or as an after-school activity does not place enough physical demand on your body for your connective tissues (tendons, ligaments and tissues around joints) to get stronger. Regular resistance training makes the body adapt to the additional load placed on your tissues making you stronger and therefore reduces changes of injury. As well as this, strength training can help improve bone thickness making it harder to break bones. Hurt during sport? regular strength training could have decreased the amount of damage or even prevented it all together. The less time you are injured the more time you enjoy! Most athletes stop sport due to injuries!

Greater Potential When You’re Older

Most of the strength gains in children comes from improving the connection from the brain to the muscles, allowing for a greater proportion of a muscle to be activated as well as better control with other muscle groups. This connection via your body’s nerves adapts to send faster signals from the brain with more detailed information on exactly how hard a muscle needs to squeeze, with which other muscles and how much of the muscle needs to be producing force. The mixture of speed and information leads to you moving more efficiently also known as improving your movement patterns.

Learning movement patterns while a child makes it a lot easier to understand and master due to you being able to learn faster than adults. Practising sport skills now allows you to have better range of physical talents and makes it easier to learn new and more difficult skills later in life. Along with better learning abilities to new skills strength training as a child has shown to increase potential muscle mass as you become an adult which can support additional strength and power abilities!

Final Words

Here are just come of the many benefits you can gain from starting strength training. However, if starting any form of strength or resistance training you MUST speak to a trained adult (coach, PE teacher, Personal Trainer or even a parent) before partaking in ANY strength training to make sure risk of hurting yourself and damaging your body is minimal.