Strength training for 8 and 9 year olds?
My son recently started playing flag football at school, and the coach wants them to do 100 pushups, squats, and calf raises daily. This seems ridiculous and excessive to me, if not downright wrong. The head of the aftercare program agreed with me--then he quit. I told my son that he can do 10 of each a day, and I'd sign off on it. But I can't imagine this is good for the other children. I'm going to email our pediatrician, but I wanted to hear what BPN parents have to say.
Feb 11, 2020
Parent Replies
My first thought is that doing all of those exercises daily would be too much effort and could cause some burnout unless your son is really motivated. Maybe every other day or 4-5 times a week is more manageable. I also wouldn't really consider body-weight exercises like that as strength training per se. Doing 100 squats and calf raises doesn't seem difficult and should be easily done in 5-10 minutes. The 100 pushups does seem a lot though. That's pretty strenuous for a kid. I would probably knock that down to 25 or 50.
I asked a friend of mine about this who has been coaching boys' lacrosse at all levels K-12 for more than 15 years. He said 100 pushups, squats, and calf raises a day for 8 & 9 year olds is crazy and it sounds like the coach is very inexperienced. He said a more experienced coach would know that is way beyond what kids that age can do. It might be appropriate for high schoolers, but for 2nd and 3rd graders he would expect no more than 10 a day. Did the school hire this coach? You should complain to the principal or the PTA or whoever hired the coach that he appears to have never coached kids this age and would benefit from some coaching himself.
I would suggest that you do exercises together so you can see how he is handling it. Start with ten reps of each, for a week. Work up to higher numbers, at the ebd if each week. If it gets to be to much, level off.