Can your kids benefit from weight training?
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The New York Times reports that strength training for children is essential. Recent research shows that children between the ages of 6-18 benefit from strength training by getter stronger and reducing their chance of injury. The children experienced improved nerve-to-muscle (neuromuscular) communication, which suggests that weight training improves a child’s physical development and is an essential element of their nervous system growth (my emphasis added).
Weight training can happen in many forms. In this case Evan is stabilizing his body weight and the roller with his hips, mid-section and shoulders. At age 3 he's already nailing down stabilization training!
Because children’s brains are very “plastic” (the brain’s ability to adjust to changing situations), weight training can really help speed up those connections between the brain/spinal cord (central nervous system) and the peripheral nervous systems of the extremities and muscles. The more situations a child experiences means that the child can adapt to learn new movements. This will have tremendous impact on them especially later in life. (Think variety in movement for optimal results!) By the way, this stuff is right in line with the International Youth Conditioning Association and its approach to teaching kids movement, which is where I’ve been trained.
In the Pediatrics review, researchers with the Institute of Training Science and Sports Informatics in Cologne, Germany analyzed 60 years of studies of weightlifting youth, which covered boys and girls ages six to 18. They found that the youth of both sexes experienced linear strength gains if they exercised consistently at least twice weekly for at least one month compared with less frequent training.
A similar story in the Wall Street Journal, however, brings to light the injury rate of youth strength training as a result of improper supervision to be as many as 26,000. In fact, another study in 2009 of 4,111 emergency room visits concluded that many were preventable and the result of improper supervision. How to prevent injury will be the topic of another post.
In the meantime, let’s summarize some important benefits to weight training for children:
- Enhanced development and neuromuscular communication
- Strength gains
- Injury reduction
- Calorie burning (obesity prevention)
- Improved confidence
Hmmm, kind of sounds like a lot of the same things adults can experience, too!
