Does working out hard and lift weights stun a child's growth?

[Kurzy]

Lol wtf kind of a quote was that?? Hahahaha

[Greg W]

Thanks guys. I think we will stick with the body weight strength training. I will weld up some monkey bars and hang them in the garage along with other crazy contraptions that I will think of. Maybe even put up rock climbing wall like I see in the gym in the MTS. Just trying to get Cora to keep pace with those wrestler boys. For a girl, she is very strong already, but when she competes against high level boys, she's quite weak.

I worked in the Rock climbing industry for 10 years. You can put up a sick 45 degree training wall in a garage. Or even just get a training board to hang up. The training wall works full body and flexability. check out Nicros.com. Also check out the training center on their site. Eric Horst is the premier rock climbing training expert, you can e-mail him, he would be happy to help, just ell him Greg sent you. He has a 14 year old boy that climbs 5.14 now. he is sick strong and healthy.

[Josh Wilson]

Here's a question that has been on my mind lately. YOu know after every tournament, I get to chat with some of the boys that compete against Cora and they told me the things that they put their son through to make them stronger and faster and all the cardio work. This leave me thinking, am I the only one wrong about this subject? Due to personal experience, I always thought that if a kid work out too hard at a young age, that that will stun their growth. My friends and I work out hard since we were about 14 years old due to the amount of violence in our area, just to protect ourselves. I was 16 years old and in my senior year I was benching 230 lb, deadlift almost 500 lbs, and squating more than 500 lbs and I was only 128 lbs. I never grew since then. So from that day on, I always believe that lifting weights and working out too hard when you are a child is a bad thing. I alway advise younger athletes to keep it at a moderate so that they can grow to their fullest potential before they hit the weights hard. What do yall think???

I had to do a piece on this for some college work. Basically lifting weights will not stunt a child's growth in any way shape or form, so long as you do it sensibly. The only way it can stunt growth is if the growth plates in the long bones are fractured or damaged. This, at a young age, is reasonably easy to do. So either do weight training which is sensible and monitored to ensure no bone damage is done or, as i better advise, do body weight training. For Cora i would keep her doing body weight training and either calisthenics or plyo-metrics until 14 when the bone density is quite near to full adult maturity for women and so is maximum height. Then you can start to lift weights more freely with less moderation. The reason why you seemed to stop growing is, unless you where on gear, from the sounds of it you hit full maturity at 16 to be able to hit those numbers and most men hardly grow after 16 anyway if they hit puberty at an average age. My personal advice is for her to train calisthenic type exercise until 14 and then change to weights if you feel the need to. Remember however that women will not particularly gain muscular size because they don’t have the testosterone men do. Anymore questions let me know.