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Seminar Preview: Training the Prepubescent

Insight into the upcoming PICP seminar on how to help kids get fit

Despite decades of medical advances, children in the U.S. today are much less healthy than their parents or even their grandparents. The situation has deteriorated to the point that researchers believe it is likely that many children born today will not live as long as their parents and that one out of three children will develop diabetes at some point, among other chronic health problems. As the multi-level marketers would say, “Let me tell you more!”

Today’s kids are overweight, out of shape, and often suffering mental health problem usually associated with old age – if President Obama is worried about health care today, just wait until he sees what this neglect will cost in medical bills when today’s kids mature. Sure, there are many young athletes who are amazing, but for every 12-year-old gymnastic sensation or midget football phenom, there are dozens of their classmates whose sedentary lifestyle is manifesting itself in the first signs of serious cardiovascular disease. And don’t think that just throwing money into sports programs is the solution, as organizations such as the National Alliance for Sports estimate that 70 percent of kids will drop out of organized sports between the ages of 13 and 15!

For these reasons, I consider it essential for the Poliquin Strength Institute to offer a special seminar on training prepubescent clients. The title is “Training the Prepubescent,” and it is a part of our Special Consideration Training Series. The seminar will be held over two days, January 11-12, at the Poliquin Strength Institute in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. I will be conducting the seminar, and the practical portion of the class will be held in our state-of-the-art 5,200-square-foot gym. As with all our other seminars and our PICP certification program, attendees will come away from the seminar with practical information they can use immediately in their work. And consider that these seminars are always evolving and that much of the information that will be presented has never been published or available from any other source.

Those who are involved in personal training should recognize that developing a business that focuses on the appropriate training of the prepubescent is a lucrative, yet relatively unexplored, market. Before I describe the details of the seminar, let’s take a closer look at what is going on in the field of strength and conditioning, and sports training in general, for young athletes.

The Youth Coaching Dilemma
One of the problems with youth coaching today is that 80 percent of the coaches working with young athletes have had no training in the field, according to “Troubling Signals from Youth Sports,” a paper published by the Center for Kids FIRST in Sports. Perhaps these coaches played sports when they were younger and think that because they were successful they are inherently good coaches. Perhaps some are in it for more selfish reasons, believing that coaching young athletes will give them a chance to relive their childhood. Perhaps some of these coaches are simply fools who believe that all you need to be a good coach is to mimic the behaviors of a military boot camp instructor or the more outrageous, animated coaches of professional sports teams who capture so much media attention. Whatever the reason, there are many disturbing trends being made public about how many coaches are mistreating kids. Let talk numbers.

In the Center for Kids FIRST in Sports paper, 17.5 percent of the kids surveyed said they had been hit, kicked or slapped by coaches, 21 percent said they had been forced to play with an injury, and 45.3 percent said they had been insulted, yelled at or called names by their coaches – oh, and 8 percent said that those names carried sexual connotations. These are not 300-pound NFL linemen we’re talking about, but kids – kids whose primary goal for playing a sport is usually just to have fun. No wonder so many kids just get fed up and quit.

Although you would expect a higher standard of care within the public school system, the physical education system in this country is in crisis. Case in point, the September 2009 issue of Pediatrics reported that from 1977 to 2007 the number of injuries that occurred in physical education classes in our schools increased by150 percent! Sure, overcrowded classes can be cited as part of the problem, but some of these problems can be traced to having kids who were not taught basic motor skills when they were younger – the paper notes that 70 percent of all the injuries occurred in organized sports such as football, basketball and soccer. Not even cheerleading is safe.

Due to the increasing emphasis on performing increasingly difficult stunts, cheerleading is responsible for 65 percent of all catastrophic sports injuries in high school! But poor strength and conditioning programs must also be blamed. In an article entitled “Pom-poms and Broken Necks,” which appeared in the Sep/Oct 2008 issue of Bigger Faster Stronger magazine, sports/liability consultant Dr. Marc Rabinoff said, “The manual of national standards for cheerleading, which was modeled after the gymnastics safety manual that I helped develop, clearly states that all cheerleading programs must have sound conditioning programs. However, I have yet to find one high school in any of the cases I’ve been involved with where there was anything that resembled a sound strength and conditioning program for competitive cheerleading.”

Having discussed some of the current problems in youth coaching, let’s get to work on solving these problems. Here are ten of the many topics that will be discussed in this 13-hour, information-packed seminar:

1. What is a prepubescent? The first step in solving a problem is defining what the problem is. Notice that the seminar is not called “Training for Boys and Girls under the Age of 13,” because that is not an accurate definition of a prepubescent. Not only do girls and boys mature at different rates, but the rate of maturing can vary significantly: In a class of 12-year-old boys, some may have the physical maturity of 11-year olds, some of 12-year olds, and some of 13- and 14-year olds. Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestselling book Outliers, discussed how making the mistake of sorting athletes by chronological age is one reason that such a disproportionate percentage of professional Canadian hockey players are born in the first quarter of the calendar year.

2. How to manipulate the loading parameters for optimal results. The American Academy of Pediatrics published a position paper in which the authors concluded, “Preadolescents and adolescents should avoid power lifting, bodybuilding, and maximal lifts until they reach physical and skeletal maturity.” Roughly, that’s about age 16 for females and age 18 for males. If a high school football coach followed this advice, the result could only end badly when the athletes the coaches put in a game are pitted against a team of weight-trained athletes. Such bizarre advice aside, this seminar will discuss the specific guidelines for designing strength and conditioning programs for prepubescents.

3. The finer points of program design. To help young people progress rapidly with minimal risk of injury, coaches and personal trainers need to put greater thought into their workouts and consider longer-term planning. As such, this seminar will cover many of the basics of periodization.

4. The pros and cons of group training. One of the trends among many trainers is to focus on group training, often because the state of the economy is such that many clients cannot afford one-on-one training. This discussion will focus on how to use group training to your advantage.

5. How to implement strongman training for this age group. Flipping tires? Pulling sleds? Is this type of training of value? How about the Super Yoke – what is the effect on a young athlete’s spine of having them walk around with a monster-sized weight on their shoulders? The answers may surprise you, as there are many strongman training methods that are safe and effective for prepubescents. And, what’s more, they can be a lot of fun!

6. The growth plate controversy. How often have you heard the argument that weight training can stunt a young person’s growth by damaging the epiphysial (growth) plates? Is this a real issue? If so, why is it OK for a 12-year-old gymnast to train 30 hours a week and perform high-intensity plyometrics, but lifting 10-pound dumbbells is taboo? What does the research say on this matter?

7. The myths of aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise is often recommended for young athletes, which is fine if the eventual goal is to develop marathon runners. But the fact is there are many long-term problems associated with focusing on aerobic exercise with young athletes, especially if the goal is to excel in sports that demand high levels of strength, power and speed.

8. Differences between males and females. What is the difference between training girls and boys? What you will learn in this seminar is that females can handle much more work than previously thought. Also, you’ll learn why young women are maturing at a much faster rate than their mothers and grandmothers, why this can be a problem and what can be done about it.

9. When it is appropriate to use power lifts and Olympic lifts. We hear stories of how young athletes, most notably from China and Bulgaria, often start lifting heavy weights before they enter their teen years. The Bulgarian, three-time Olympic champion Naim Suleymanoglu was breaking senior world records at the age of 15. How is this possible? And if sports such as Olympic-style weightlifting are so dangerous, then how do you explain that a study in the United Kingdom found that the injury rate of soccer per 100 hours of exposure was 6.2 percent compared to competitive weightlifting with a rate of only 0.17 percent? Studies such as these will be discussed to help you decide the truth about competitive lifting.

10. Nutrition and the use of supplements. How well, or for that matter how poorly, do American kids eat? And how much do eating habits play in the ever-increasing rate of childhood obesity? Do kids need supplements, and are there specific supplements that can help kids learn better in the classroom? Specific supplements, along with the appropriate protocols for their use, will be discussed in detail.

The seminar covers a wide variety of topics, but I will make time available to answer any specific questions attendees might have about training prepubescent clients. The goal is to make this a valuable, and unique, experience for you – rather than simply reading a book by someone you think is an expert. Because of the nature of this topic, the class is small to maintain the highest quality of instruction, so make your reservations early!

(Important Note: At the time of this writing, only three spots remain for the January 11-12 seminar. If you are interested in attending, call The Poliquin Strength Institute as soon as possible at 401-398-7845 so you won’t miss out.)