When should kids start strength training? | One Good Question

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Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to One
Good Question, our Friday episode of fifty

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percent Facts, where we take questions
from y'all. If you want to get

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also you can ask us a question. And today's question is, and I

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think we've covered this generally, but
I don't know right on the head specifically,

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when and how should parents introduce their
kids to strength training. It's a

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good question, Yeah, I mean
in in you know, Eastern Bloc Europe,

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it's very common to do it early. You know, they're doing body

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weight stuff, gymnastics and some type
of weightlifting, or at least the movements

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themselves. Most research shows that,
you know, with any basic proper program,

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lifting weights is not gonna hurt by
any means, you know, the

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whole stunt, your growth thing,
et cetera, et cetera. The only

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way that happens is an impact injury
around a growth plate, which means,

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you know, someone gets crushed by
a squat and snaps their leg. But

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that's obviously much less likely than even
a kid snapping their leg playing in a

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tree or playing soccer. It could
happen. Yeah, it can happen anywhere,

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but it's in a controlled environment.
It's much less likely. And lifting

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weights is the most controlled movement possible. You know, soccer, it doesn't

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really matter. Any team sport,
even track and field obviously much more dynamic

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and much more likely for bad things
to go wrong. And you would never

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say like, oh, I don't
want my kid to run. Right.

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In terms of introducing like strength training
particularly, I think you know, and

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again I'm not a parent, so
take it with what you want. But

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I have worked with kids of all
ages in the gym and coaching in basketball

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for years. I think the most
important thing for all of this is just

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to give exposure and introduce different activities
and also lead by example. Those are

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the kind of the two things I
look at, So exposure to different sports,

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throwing a ball, kicking a ball, shooting a ball, hitting a

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ball, baseball, golf, hockey, all those different things, and to

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make sure that they're having fun at
the younger ages is most important. And

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then hopefully they find themselves more attracted
to or interested in one of the activities.

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Maybe they're like running more, they
like swimming more, they like kicking

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more, they like throwing more,
and the weight training itself could be basic.

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You know. The other thing too, is I would just the issue

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with strength training is that it doesn't
feel like a game, and so you

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kind of like it's more of like
a switch to me, you either introduce

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it or not. Where the other
sports you can kind of like play,

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and I think playing, playing and
enjoying the physical activity is most important.

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But what I would say and easy
and dot is Bart himself. Bart has

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a gym in the back of his
house and he works out every morning,

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you know, five am to like
seven am. His son's eating breakfast and

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sees them doing that through the window, and now Taiker comes out and like

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asks them for an exercise. You
know. So one day Bart will have

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them do a couple of push ups. One day Bart will have them do

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a couple of kettlebell swings, some
goblet squads, bodyweight squads, et cetera.

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But that's kind of the leading example
part where until they're probably playing really

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competitive sports, which is like junior
high, high school, I'm probably not

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even like showing them the gym gym
or saying, you know, I'm probably

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waiting for them to ask me to
come to the gym with myself or ask

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something like that. Where again,
introduction to general movement, general sport,

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I think is always great. But
if I'm doing push ups at home every

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night and my son sees that and
wants to do push ups with me,

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like, yeah, I'm gonna let
them do it. I think the way

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you said there's totally the key to
it. It's like when are they interested?

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How interested? Are they interested enough
to just stick with doing something or

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is it just like they want to
try it one time? Whatever? Another

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one is like opportunity, Like if
you have a home gym, that's a

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totally different thing. Yeah, then
you know, because like where else is

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a kid gonna get exposed to stuff? Like if you don't have a home

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gym, then you have to rely
on either trainers that take younger kids or

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you have to wait until a kid
is able to be a gym member,

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and they have to be you know, initially, they have to be with

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a parent a particular age and so
like that's a lot of places it's twelve

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or fourteen or whatever, and that
makes sense. Or if they're playing a

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sport, yeah, they might do
it. A school organized sport where they're

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yeah, the team's doing it,
the team's doing it. I mean that's

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but those are not I mean most
of those are not happening before eighth grade,

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right, Yeah, and you can't
make the gym like fun. But

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again, like inherently it's not like
a game, like you have to like

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learn to squat or not, or
like, yeah, you should probably teach

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your kid how to like run correctly
into correctly, but it doesn't have to

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be so structured. First you just
run and throw and they're just having fun

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and you're just playing tag, which
is just running where the gym just doesn't

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have like that kind of intro exposure
aspect. It's hard to gamify, yeah,

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unless you use it anna app or
something. Yeah, but then even

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then, like you still have to
learn and you're like in it, right,

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So like a formal introduction I would
probably say, like junior high or

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once they find some kind of sport
or they find interest if they find interest

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earlier. Yeah, man, teach
your five year old how to like air

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squad, there's no harm in that. Teach them how to plank, teach

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them how to push up if they
want to try chin ups. When they're

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at the park fucking round. I
think there's no harm. But yeah,

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I don't think there's like a right
way, but I think there's probably multiple

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like wrong ways. Yeah, And
I think like one wrong way is to

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force kids to do something that they're
not interested in, right, you know.

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Yeah, if anything like super structured
just isn't fun because you're stuck in

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school all day, like you're stuck
with homework, like your whole life structured.

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So if I'm a kid, my
dad's like, all right, man's

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push up hour, Like fuck that, you know. Yeah, My my

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grandkids are kind of good examples because
the older one, he's like anything that,

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anything there is to do, he's
got an excuse for why he doesn't

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want to do it, and then
he gets there and he has a good

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time, and that's just that's just
just personality. That's just him. Whereas

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his brother, who's about to be
seven next month, recently decided they've been

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doing gym she's been doing gymnastics since
he was like three or four. And

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because they start very early in the
parts of Canada where you can't be outdoors

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all winter, you're gonna do something. You gotta do something, uh,

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And he has very recently decided that
this, this round of gymnastics is his

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last. He's done, he's not
interested anymore. Whatever, just doesn't like

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it. Yeah, And and the
mistake is to, you know, force

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a kid to keep doing something that
they're not they're not interested in doing.

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Yeah. Yeah, I think you
force exposure, but you don't force the

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continuance, right, because they don't
know you. You're the adult for a

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reason. You know what's best for
them, and they should at least try

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it. But if he's tried it
a couple of years and now he's over

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it, yeah, you should probably
listen to your kid. I think too.

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It's like you enjoying it and being
good at it are different things too,

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for sure, because there are plenty
of adults who's like, like say,

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I love golf, but I suck
at it, or I have tennis,

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but I suck at it. And
that's a particular mindset too, Like

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not everybody can do that, yeah, everybody. Some people are just too

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competitive to have fun doing something that
they don't excel at. And you just

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have more freedoms as an adult obviously, right, you get to choose all

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that stuff as a kid. If
you like suck at everything and you're being

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forced to do it, it's going
to be torture. Yeah, I think

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you need to figure out how to
help your kid, maybe more importantly than

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anything else, figure out how to
develop that sense of mastery about something in

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kids. And right, that's where
the balance of like quitting happens, because

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you don't want them just like quit
either. Yeah, and like maybe it's

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hard, like well you want him
to do hard shit, right, Yeah,

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that is a fine balance, and
there's no like direct answer. But

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like my parents handled most of that
pretty good. I was obviously in love

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with basketball, so it's easy.
But like with stuff I didn't like,

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like college or whatever, they're like, well, like you just got to

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do something, Like you either got
to go get a couple of jobs or

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you're gonna go to college, or
you're gonna do like do something. So

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maybe that's like the sport rule,
like all right, you don't have to

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be on the soccer team, but
then we're going for an hour walk every

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afternoon, or you need to be
outdoors for three hours a day, or

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there's gotta be something. Right,
you don't like soccer, all right,

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we'll go try gymnastics. You don't
like gymnastics, We'll go try golf,

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or we'll go try basketball or whatever. And then, yeah, I think

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a lot of them. Yeah,
so much depends on the kid. But

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he's getting to do everything. You
know, Bart's got taikn something every day

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and seemingly enjoys them all. I'm
sure there's one or two he likes better

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than the others, but it's doing
muyti one day, basketball the next day,

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jiu jitsu the next day, generally
speaking, and he always talks highly

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of him and always wants to show
off and tell me what he's doing and

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stuff. So you find a group
full of them, and then as you

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get older, they probably line up
better or worse with a different sport.

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Dech is still like six, so
yeah, he's just happy to run around.

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But yeah, you get seven,
eight, nine, ten, and

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then even junior high and then high
school hopefully you know, you choose a

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sport or two and yeah, se
or have fun. And he's not yet

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at the point where or school is
going to be demanding in a way that

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you can't keep up that level of
activity. Because you do reach that point.

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Yeah, yeah, I think it
depends, because I mean high school

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sports you're playing every single day.
Yeah, I just mean like the variety

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of different activities. It'll be hard, yeah, hard, and you want

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to get good like older you get
you start to mature about that, right,

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and you're like right, like a
all right, I really enjoy this.

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Let me focus on this. I
think this just naturally happens because as

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a kid, you as a first
grader, if they like math or history

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and they don't know, but you
ask an eighth grader and they have a

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topic they like some of it's just
natural evolution. But yeah, hopefully that

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helps you ladies and gentlemen. New
episodes Wednesday and Friday. So I'm like

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where you want to find me through
sp dot col for all your apparel needs

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and we'll catch you next week.
I'm at the Jim mcdanell, the social

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media This show fifty percent Facts.
Four percent is a word and fifty is

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just numbers. Fifty percent facts.
This is a Breaker Prime podcast and association

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with iHeartMedia on the Obscure Celibrity Network. And we'll talk to you next week