Kids and Fitness Machines

B

Brian Grasso

0
Where's everyone been???

Last time I checked, this Board was AWOL! Glad to see we are back on the Net.

Just a little light reading as to why you MUST keep kids off of weight training machines -

* Fitness machines were designed and manufactured to fit the ‘average person’ (whatever that means) and typically allow for one to three adjustments in order to help make it more appropriate for your body type. With roughly 700 muscles and 206 bones in each of us, can any machine adapt to truly fit our unique structures or accommodate our distinctive movement patterns?

* Machines direct your force production through a pre-guided motion. There are several problems with that. Athletically speaking, nothing is pre-guided; when producing force, YOU must control its direction. The other issue is that the linear pre-set path you are forced into may or may not be a biomechanically efficient for you. Our movement patterns are as unique as our thumbprints and the pre-set pattern you are producing force through isn’t necessarily allowing your body to move the way it NEEDS to. Biomechanically speaking, no two pitchers pitch the same way; no two hockey players take a slap shot the same way; because most sports are free flowing, movement-based activities, we inevitably involve our own biomechanical individuality while performing them. By restricting your biomechanical freedom, you are training at a sub-optimal level and setting yourself up for a potential biomechanical dysfunction or injury.

* Unilateral simply means one side of the body at a time. If you examine a given motion in any particular sport, you will see that force/power is most often produced on one side of the body and then transferred to the other side. With their limited motion, machines are not able to effectively train unilateral strength which renders them very un-functional from a sporting perspective.

* Machines work in one plane at a time. To keep things simple, there are three planes to human motion: 1) Sagittal - movement which is parallel to the midline of your body. The sagittal plane divides the body into left and right portions 2) Frontal - movement which is perpendicular to the midline of your body. The frontal plane divides the body into front and back portions. 3) Transverse - movement which involves rotation. The transverse plane divides the body into top and bottom portions. All sports require both movement and stabilization through all three planes of motion. Not only can machines not accommodate the ever-changing multiplanar requirements of sport, but they do not necessitate stabilization at all - sports are dynamic, movement oriented and variable, unfortunately machines are very fixed, stable and static structures.

* Machines cannot accommodate the transverse plane at all. Pursuant to the point above, I wanted to make one reference to our body and its composition. . This is particularly concerning when examining the structure of the human body. As referenced in many Kinesiology based books, over 85% of our core musculature is oriented horizontally or diagonally, which means that we are built for rotational movement - a movement that machines cannot service.

- Brian
 
Brian,
All of what you have said makes sense. I am curious though... Do you recommend athletes using free weights instead or no traditional strength training at all? At what age (if any) do these notions run out or are no longer applicable? What about sports that need power/endurance through specific movements? For example, a lineman in football must have extraordinary pecs and tris to hold off a rusher. What sorts of exercises would you have this athlete perform to improve his efficency in this area? And when are you going to write some more!!!

~Curious Lex
 
Free weights are dumbells, bars, benches... just as the name eludes to, they are weights that are free to move in any direction. Selectorized equipment (ie Nautilus, Life Fitness, Cybex) are machines that have predefined movements and only allow you to work in one plane of movement.
 
Lex,
Being that you are a trainer yourself (if memory serves), I think that you would really benefit from Brian's book or DVD, Complete Functional Conditioning



Incidentally, as you age and your nervous system becomes more efficient, you can then start to get more specific with your training. Kids can start to learn the proper movements when they are young, but they also need a lot of exposure to wide variation of stimuli. Brian's specialty is designing programs for kids to make them better all around athletes, and to be well-armed against injuries with a solid foundation.

If I were to teach a young child any strength moves on weights it would most certianly be on free weights, not those "mini-machines" they are using all over the country now. I have the DVD and I love it! I am using a lot of the moves in there on my kids, and a few on myself. For those of us in the industry it is a MUST! Not only that, there is a huge niche yet to be filled in most markets, so if you are considering growing your clientele you should talk to Brian about how to become a local "expert" in youth athletic development.
 
Geez... Thanks JP!

Lex, I would LOVE to post here more, but you and JP are the ONLY people to EVER respond to me... It's kinda like listening to yourself talk!

Regarding your question about lineman...

Yes, lineman do require large amounts of force to either deliver or resist a block, but they must do so through an integrative means (i.e. lower body, core and upper body working as a unit). Look at it this way -

Bench Press:

Body Position - Supine lying
Strength Output - Vertical vector of force
Integrative Force - NONE

Sport Application (Defensive End in football):

Body Position - Standing (multiplanar support required)
Strength Output - Primarily horizontal vector of force
Integrative Force - SIGNIFICANT

From this perspective, I don't see much validity for bench press as an exercise for football players at the youth level. Kids need to learn to develop functional strength (i.e. multiplanar, un-stabilized etc).

Did that answer your questions? Keep 'em coming!

- Brian
 
A response off someone other than JP or Lex. LOL :)

I think that resistance training for young athletes is an advantage to their training and will help them progress a lot faster than just doing sport specific training. Although only if trained by a professional. This sort of training will also set them off on the right foot for correct training techniques and will reduce the possibility of injuries dramatically.

What is the safest age to begin light resistance training for general sport considering the growth injury factors?
 
I don't know if I'm considered an expert like some of the others, but light training (and i mean light) can be done pretty much anytime ... but, I don't do full out training until they have reached about 14/15 ... but, still not too heavy of weights ... i've watched way too many times the kids that get serious about weight training and feel that they can do it by themselves and it's a nightmare ... their form is absolutely attrocious
 
you do not want to destroy children/ youths growth plates with weight training at a too early age... this is why when training younger athletes that training with their own body weight would be best..... plyometrics
 
This is the kind of reply that always confuses me... 100% NO insult intended here, kristyxox.

Research has never shown that resistance training is harmful for young athletes. High volume/load and decreased technical ability through a lift is VERY much a concern. Having said that, it is not the ACT of resistance training that is the concern, it is the INCORRECT act of resistance training. Don't blame the act... Blame the fools who think they are experts and don't bother to learn how to teach or program the concepts properly.

Now, back to the confusing angle...

kristyxox raised a good point with respect to growth plates. Having said that, what places more potenital strain on a growth plate, excessive jumping or resistance training???? Body weight exercises (whether they are resistance-based or power-based) place a very significant strain on the human body... Much more so than a 5 lbs. external load.

They key with young athletes is to not pigeon-hole ANY aspect of training. Motor control/CNS development is THE most crucial aspect of developing a young athlete. Having said that, movement based activity, that preaches technical execution rather than volume must administered.


- Brian
 
Excellent answer Brian. I wish they did "stickies" over here so we could keep this at the top. I cannot tell you how many times the question of age and when to start training comes up in the training forum. Many kids at 14-16 don't consider themselves to be "children", and assume to train themselves like adults (i.e. "homegrown muscle", "canadian cannons", or one of Ian King's routines off of T-mag), or they take the other extreme and think that they are too young to lift weights without stunting their growth. Bill H. posted a great starting workout for kids over at my site while you were travelling a couple of months ago... I may just post it in this thread so I can refer all the many posters who ask that question to one place to find the answer to that FAQ.
 
Being that athletes generally possess more "body awareness", if I may call it that, we are at a slight advantage when working with this select population. To put it simply, athletes tend to have better coordination for isolateral/independent limb motion and even contralateral movement of the upper and lower limbs. I would however like to post a little blurb for anyone out there working with the average lay-person (particularly if you are giving them their introductory, basic, "included-in-your-membership" program!)...yes, machines are (almost) completely non-functional when compared to athletic activities and activities of daily living. There will be times though, when you are dealing with a client who posesses very little coordination and/or a limited ability to retain information. Machines can be useful in such times. HOWEVER (!!!!), explore your facilities...there are machines that, while still guiding the person through the range of motion, will work the left and right limbs independently (Hammer Strength, among others)...choose these type of machines rather than the more "basic" ones. This would be no different than guiding the person with your hands until they get the hang of the motion, something you could do if you were PTing this client and going to be there EVERY TIME...which is unfortunately not always the case. Remember, even though athletes are a "select population" (such as I reffered to them earlier), everyone has muscle imbalances inherent to handedness and repeptitive movements carried on in daily living...it is your job to balance them out! ;)
 
Hey Mogwai,

Thanks for the reply. I am a little pressed for time right now, so promise to be brief.

I think I am a little confused by your post. Athletic or otherwise, clinical research has shown that certain physiological adaptations occur at certain chronological points in life - this is not a matter of athletics, it's a matter of growth (as outlined by Drabik).

Having said that, the goal with any young person (athlete or otherwise) is to produce/develop as functional and dysfunction free an individual as possible. This 'functionality' certainly includes motor control/coordination.

If clinically we know that certain age groups respond optimally to coordination-based stimulus, then not introducing this stimulus could have negative effects for a lifetime (plasticity of nervous system research shows that these 'optimal stimulus' timeframes have chronological caps). Putting a young person on a strength training machine when they are notably lacking coordination wouldn't suffice in terms of nervous system development.

Anywho, always love to share ideas. Thanks for the post!

- Brian
 
I definitely agree....after all, the point IS indeed to develop coordination...what I mean is that sometimes an individual requires a progressive introduction to "free" training...as I said, particularly with populations that are "unathletic", if you wish. In sort, it serves as an anatomical adaptation phase, which, granted, should be as short as possible...an individual who has never trained before will begin to gain neural adaptations from the lifting alone, to then progress into a more functional approach. As I mentioned in the post, I am thinking particularly of the people who are not being PTed and are being given a program only to find themselves on their own for every other time they train after that...I do not think machines are an ultimate culprit, again this very much depending on the individual in question.

I wasn't referring to training a child, as I have little experience there, but rather thinking of a more middle-aged, inexperienced and previously sedentary individual. I am certain a child would have an excellent predisposition to developping coordination due to growth and learning ability.

Looking back, I realize the post was originally entitled "Kids and fitness machines"...so I guess it is my post that is kind of in the wrong place, and my explanations a little scattered (?)...sorry ;)

All in all, what I was trying to impress is that there is a place for machines in a fitness center, as there seemed to be a generl consensus that they were all bad...but this may have been a bit of a misunderstanding...again, I apologize...and hope I am not being more confusing than ever with this long post!

Thanks!
 
Teens and Creatine

Hello,
I have just been surfing the net looking at various websites on the issue "Is creatine harmful?". Seeking more knowledge of the subject, I am now turning to you guys. So, I have one simple question: "Is it really harmful?". I have researched this topic for quite some time now. I have heard many things about this supplement. I have heard very good and dangerous side effects. What is your opinion of this supplment? Currently, I am taking Whey Protein and have seen very small results from the time I started using it. I have only gained several pounds from using it for what I would say about 3/4 of a year. I am a freshman in highschool and I participate in soccer. This year, I was unfortunately stuck on the freshman team when I could have made varsity. I lack strength and bulk muscle. I am a rather light kid weighing in at about 125 lbs right now. However, I am looking to improve these results and become stronger. I go to a gym 2-3 times a week and I am doing strength training. Now, I have seen the results of creatine and I find it phenomenal to see the improvement in some of these kids. Most people say that is causes muscle injuries (i.e Strains and Pulls). I have actually read the debates of some people on how it causes kidney diseases. Getting first hand opinions from these kids that take it are telling me that this stuff is "great" and really works well. My mom, being the over-protective mother that she is, asked my neighbor who is a pharmacist about creatine. He told her it was harmful and only adolescents should use it. However, on a couple sites I have seen some of the trainers and other supplement "experts" talking about how it is actually really harmful in adults and not teenagers. I would just like your view on this supplement and your recommendation. Sorry, for the really long post! :p

-Caboose :p
 
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