Guidance For Parents
If you are reading this, you have already made a GREAT decision for your child; supporting their interest in strength training. It is one of the best things kids can do for their sports career, physical health and psychological well being. In order to best support your child in their training, here are some practical tips:
The single most important factor for progress in training is consistency. Anything you can do to ensure consistency in your son/daughter’s training is nothing short of heroic and will help to maximize this investment of resources. The training process is never perfect and remember that doing something is ALWAYS better than doing nothing. Doing something, even if it isn’t optimal, helps to keep consistency.
Most of the strength gains your child will achieve through training will come from their recovery from work outs. Recovery has become a big topic in today’s athletic landscape. The most time proven recovery methods are proper nutrition, drinking water and quality sleep. Our coaches do not have a background in nutrition but we have been training long enough to understand the fundamentals of a performance diet. Athletes who are training hard need about 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. If they are trying to gain muscle, consider “bodyweight” as the weight they are trying to get to. Simply put, protein helps to solidify gains from training, carbohydrates provide fuel to burn during training and aid in recovering from work outs and fruits and vegetables promote overall systemic health (this is necessary for hard training). Your child should not train hard that day if they’ve gotten 5 or less hours of sleep the night before. A low tech indicator for hydration is the color of your urine – ideally it should be almost clear.
Pay attention to pain. We do not want training to cause pain of any kind. There are enough painful parts about playing competitive sports without adding more from the gym. If your son/daughter reports something hurting, take note of it. Saying “this hurts” doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong but this complaint should still be used as a data point. Youth athletes are still learning their bodies and might not understand when discomfort is cause for concern or not. Having their parent as another set of eyes and ears can help us determine how to address a potential injury.
Understand that our bodies don’t know the difference between stress from the gym and other life stressors. Our system only can handle so much before stressors start to outweigh our body’s capacity to recover from them. If your child is running on low sleep, had a romantic break up and finals week in school, this is not the time to push hard during training. Sometimes athletes don’t even know that they are under a lot of stress and that is why it is important for parents to communicate when necessary with the coach.
Be mindful about the messages you are sending about body image and diet. Remember that our training is for performance, not aesthetics. World class athletes come in all shapes and sizes. Additionally, athletes need to fuel their bodies differently than “normal people”. You would be amazed how a kid’s confidence soars as their physical capabilities improve. Thus, it is the athlete’s best interests for their parents to support behaviors that contribute to this growth.
Best of luck with your training today!
With Thanks,