Tips for Teen Weightlifting and Bodybuilding (Age, Diet, Training, Do’s and Dont’s, Etc.)

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Hey, this is Mike from muscle for life and welcome to another episode of the podcast. In this episode, I want to talk about weightlifting and bodybuilding and as we can throw in some athletic training as well. For teenagers, I get quite a few emails every week from teenagers and parents [00:03:00] of teenagers asking what they should do or what they’re, what they should have their kids do.

And I thought maybe it could warrant a good article. Maybe I’ll do an article as well, but I’m going to talk about it first year on the podcast and this may not be directly applicable to you, but you probably know somebody who is. Who has a teenager that is playing sports or maybe get interested in weightlifting or so forth.

So hopefully you all find it helpful. Okay. So let’s go over this first point here on my little outline. And that is that weightlifting does not stunt growth. That’s a myth. I’ve done quite a bit of studying on it and there’s no scientific evidence of it. And it doesn’t logically make sense.

It’s one of those things that you would think, Oh because of compression on the spine, maybe from squatting or overhead pressing or deadlifting that was stunt growth. It does not stunt growth. In fact, it actually, unless you were to go so far overboard.

Sure. If you’re going to. Be weightlifting for hours and hours every day, that could be an issue. But if it’s being done semi sensibly, it’s not going to stunt your growth. If you’re the teenager listening or, it’s not going to stunt your kid’s growth or your friend’s kids growth or whatever.

In fact, it may actually help [00:04:00] because of the hormonal responses, especially the growth hormone response that is associated with exercise, especially intense exercise heavy weightlifting. And also, sprinting high intensity type of cardio. Which you get quite a bit of, a lot of kids get when they play sports growing up.

Another point here, this is specifically addressed to, to teenage girls and just girls in general. But it’s war. I want to say it because I get it a lot. I get asked a lot about it. And that is that weightlifting is not going to make you bulky. Yes. Weightlifting is going to build muscle, but realize that While girls can build muscle effectively you girls start with a lot less muscle.

And that’s really the bigger disparity that we see in between girls and guys. It’s not so much that girls can’t build muscle anywhere. Nearly as effective as guys do tend to gain muscle faster. But the bigger difference is in the amount of muscle that they are starting with. So girls start with comparatively speaking a lot less muscle than guys.

If a guy puts on 30 pounds of muscle, that’s a certain type of look. And if a girl [00:05:00] puts on 30 pounds of muscle, she doesn’t look nearly as large and it’s not going to be as strong as the guy. Cause she still has quite a bit less muscle on her frame. However. The this idea that weightlifting makes girls bulky is again, one of those things that might seem to make sense on the surface because as muscles get bigger, you look bigger.

And if you look, a lot of girls are turned off to weightlifting because they go to CrossFit gyms or they see on the internet videos of CrossFit girls and a lot of them do look very bulky and so if you look at those girls are doing a lot of weightlifting and they look like that.

I definitely don’t want to look like that, so I’m definitely not going to do any weightlifting. But what. You need to understand about that is yes, there is a point where a girl can take on a bulky look, even, genetics are going to come into play here. Some in this is girls and guys, some people tend to be, big boned, big structure and they just look more and more bulky or blocky as they gain size.

That is just something that needs to be accounted for. But more, much more commonly, what you’re looking at is [00:06:00] you’re looking at girls that have gained a fair amount of muscle, but have not gotten lean enough.

So when, this applies to guys as well, but guys are not worried about looking bulky, especially in the beginning, that’s what most guys want is they want to look bulky. They start out skinny or skinny fat or whatever. And yeah, sure. They would love to be big and lean, but in the beginning they’ll take big at first because you got to get big first.

You’re not going to. Yeah. Sure. You can. There’s a bit of a recomp you can do in the beginning, but in the long run, you’re really going to have to work on gaining your size and then getting down to a low body fat percentage and maintaining it. That’s the bigger picture. So it’s not so much of a worry or a lot of guys say, I wish they would say, I wish I could look bulky.

Whereas very few girls are going to say that. So it’s very important for girls to understand that as you have, as you gain more muscle, you have to maintain a lower body fat percentage to have the look that most girls want. And I’m speaking from experience there, working with thousands of girls that look that most [00:07:00] girls wants.

Most girls want is a lean athletic type of look where you have muscle tone, you have muscle shape, you have curves. But. You’re also very lean. So you have not a flat stomach or even a bit of abs. You have in your legs, you can see quads, you can see hamstrings again, where it’s more curves.

It’s maybe not, there’s not the type of separation and shredded type of look that a lot of guys want. And in terms of numbers, what that. Generally boils down to for most girls if they’re starting from just a normal physique or even overweight, let’s say if they’re starting from a normal amount of lean mass, which is obviously relatively low for most girls, then that requires gaining about, I would say 20 pounds of muscles, probably a 15 as it would be probably a minimum.

15 to 20 pounds of muscle and being at about 16 to 18 percent body fat. That’s the look that most girls want. And getting there again, you have to gain that muscle and how you go about [00:08:00] gaining that muscle. You could, you can take a, the most direct approach, which would be a bulking and cutting type of a approach where you’re juggling your body fat percentage between 20 and 25, 26%.

So you’re in a surplus to go from 20 ish to 25 ish. And hopefully you can drag that out over time, gain a fair amount of muscle, cut the fat back, cut the fat down cut back down to the 20 percent range, and then rinse repeat until you have the amount of muscle that you want. And then get under 20 percent and just stay there.

That’s the most direct approach, but you have to be okay with gaining size and losing size. And so that means your clothes are going to fit you funky when you’re bigger and then you’re going to be smaller and you’re probably not going to so much how you look as you, when you get toward the end of your books.

That’s how it is for guys as well. Very, when I haven’t bulked in a while, but the last time that I was bulking was a couple of years ago. And by the end one, I was sick of eating food. I was eating over 4, 000 calories a day. And I was ending my day with a massive bowl of pasta, which, yeah, that sounds [00:09:00] great.

But I wasn’t even basically it got to the point where I was never hungry. I don’t really get hungry, but I never even wanted to eat. Like I was every meal I could have gladly not eaten, but I had to eat it to get in my calories. So you have that. And then, I didn’t get really fat, but I probably ended around 13 percent or so.

And for me, that feels fat. And I just don’t like how my clothes don’t fit right. And I just, my chest looks way too big and I just don’t like how my body looks at that size. So you’re probably going to go through the same experience if you go through it on that road, but. If you don’t mind that, and again, like I wasn’t complaining about it.

I just, it’s just one of those things you look at almost with amusement where you just think it’s funny. You know what I mean? Oh look, I’m fatter now. All right. Now it’s time to cut. Then that’s the most direct way to get there. Some girls don’t want to really go through that. They would rather.

They’d rather gain muscle slower to stay leaner. And you can do that through things like calorie cycling, which if you go to muscle for life and search for calorie cycling, you’ll find the article also link it down below for, on YouTube. So you can go check it out or with shorter [00:10:00] books and cuts and.

And I guess those are really the two main things or being in a very slight surplus where you’re almost at maintenance and sometimes you’re going to be at in a slight deficit on some days. And so that’s how some girls prefer to do it and they know it’s just going to take longer. I do generally recommend the former method where you just get it done as quickly as possible.

And it’s going to take a couple of years, but then at the end of that couple of years you have the body that you want and now it’s just maintaining it, which you can do for the rest of your life. You can have, if you’re 20 years old, you can have this, the same body at 40 years old, even at 50 years old, if you maintain it.

Correctly, for your entire life. If you’re a teenage girl or you have a teenage girl, or you’re gonna be sending to somebody with a teenage girl, just know that weightlifting is not going to, it doesn’t make girls bulky as long as they stay lean. That’s the most important point.

So weightlifting is not inherently dangerous. This is the next point I want to talk about is it’s just it’s an idea that many parents have and many teenagers have. [00:11:00] And the caveat though, is it’s not dangerous if you go about it correctly and going about it correctly means of course, form overweight.

So in the, especially in the beginning. When teens are weightlifting for the first time, it’s very important that they learn proper form first and not just, go with their friends and try to keep up with everybody and try to one up each other and ego lifting with bad form. You can find videos of this all over the internet that are very cringe because you do not want to get.

Injured. If you’re, if you’re the teenager or you have a teenager, what we want to avoid is any type of injury while your body or while their bodies are still developing. So I’m just going to, I’m just going to say you in general, as if I’m speaking to the teenager whether I am or not, but just for, just to keep it simple.

So that’s what that’s the key thing is want to avoid injury. And you avoid injury by using proper form and not getting overzealous with the weights and just not being stupid. And as a, when I was a teenager, I did all kinds of stupid things. We have a proclivity to stupidity as teenagers, especially boys where [00:12:00] now our testosterone is raging and we think we’re awesome and we think we can do anything.

So Just know that it’s not dangerous, but you have to respect it. That’s that’s the point. Because if you start getting into heavier weightlifting and you are, making the common mistakes that you’re going to see other people making in the gym. You’re going to see people, rounding their back during deadlifts and overextending in the back of the deadlift.

You’re going to see people bowing their knees in when they squat or half squatting with way too much weight. You’re going to see a lot of this stuff. Don’t Emulate them, even if they don’t get hurt. And, it’s, it makes them look cool that they can put five plates on the bar and, pick it up with terrible form.

That is really not the point. And it’s also not only is that increase the risk of injury, but it’s counterproductive in the long run because it actually, it’s going to hold you back in your progress. When you use improper form your form, when, as you, as when you sacrifice form, it can allow you to move more weight.

But that is not going to build the muscle and the strength that you need to continue progressing because once your form [00:13:00] goes to shit, you can’t go, there’s only so shitty, there’s only so far that you can go with shitty form. And then now you’re stuck at this higher weight, risking injury every time you pull or push or squat or whatever.

And you’re going to get stuck because your muscles are not there. They’re meant to move through a certain types of ranges of motion. Your body is meant to. work in certain biomechanical ways and the muscles support the skeleton in different ways. And, work through movement patterns in different ways.

So when that starts breaking down, things are not working the way they should. And inevitably it leads to a plateau which, if you can, if someone continues with bad form in that plateau, they can get hurt obviously, or it just leads directly to injury. So with now that we have a few kind of myths out of the way.

Let’s talk about age. In, in all the reading that I’ve done on this subject, I haven’t found a great answer on what’s the best age to start weightlifting. When I am emailing with parents or emailing directly with teenagers, my general recommendation is this. If about 16 is probably a good [00:14:00] age to start.

If kids are younger, 13, 14, 15, I generally tell parents to start with a good body weight program. There’s a lot you can do with your body weight. And that’s a great safe introduction to resistance training that will get results. If you go to muscle for life and search for body weight. Workout, you’ll see a, a whole article I put together that gives a great routine that anyone can do that requires very little equipment.

The most you need is a pull up bar and a dip station. You can skip the dip station. You don’t need it. Or I wouldn’t say station. It’s like a dip bar, I don’t know, it’s maybe 60, 70 and it doesn’t take up any space. And then a pull up bar is, I don’t know, maybe 30 or 40.

And again, I keep mine in the box and when I’m going to use it, I take it out and it back in the box and that’s it. So that’s a great place to start. I do know of quite a few younger, younger teenagers, 13, 14, 15 that started weightlifting and have done well. I, when that is the case, that kind of depends on, on, on the person’s body.

If you have a 13 year old that is well developed and [00:15:00] maybe even a little bit big for his age, And it has good coordination because that’s also, I don’t remember if you’re not a teenager and you’re listening to this, remember, if you remember, when you’re a teenager, your body’s kind of awkward and you’re still, you’re getting, you’re growing and now the muscles are getting stronger and you haven’t really calibrated everything yet.

So that’s something to keep in mind when, if you’re trying to, if you’re trying to. do a heavy set of squats. For instance, you may not realize how much balance and how much muscle coordination goes into that. Younger weightlifters can run into problems if they try to lift really heavy and that their bodies, they just don’t have good enough control of their bodies yet to maintain proper form when things get hard.

And, when you’re getting into that. If you’re lifting heavy and you’re at that third or fourth or fifth rep and you’re really giving it your all, you want to be so clumsy with your body that’s why your form falls apart. If you are your kid or whatever, if you’re, let’s say a teenager is 13, 14, 15 wants to start with weightlifting.

I think that’s okay. Depending on the situation, it can be okay. I would say they’ll start in [00:16:00] a higher rep range, maybe 10 to 12 reps to really learn proper form and just start building a. Basic foundation of strength. And then after maybe a year or so of that when the kid is very comfortable with what he’s doing or what she’s doing, then move into some heavier stuff.

Simple, like basically what I talk about, bigger, leaner, stronger. It’d be my program for. For guys and thinner than you’re stronger is my program for girls. So I would say in the beginning, just keep it simple, lighter weights it’s still moderately heavy, but lighter weights, focus on form focus on gaining control of your body and feeling comfortable in all the movements and then start adding weight.

So the next point here that is very important for teenagers is don’t try to get super shredded at your age. You don’t want to spend a large amount of time in a calorie deficit because it can interfere with your body’s natural development. So you have, there are a lot of changes that are going on in the body, a lot of hormonal changes, you have a lot of things that are your body is building itself essentially and growing at a rapid rate.

And that requires energy to do. And when you’re in a calorie deficit, when you’re restricting [00:17:00] your body’s energy, its ability to do that, especially to build up tissues is impaired and you don’t want that. It also, a calorie deficit if depending on how large the calorie deficit is and depending how long you’re in a calorie deficit, it’s going to reduce anabolic hormone levels, which again, you don’t want.

So this is important that, and this is one of the most common pieces of advice that I have to give teenagers is, cause they watch these videos online of Ziz and Jeff Seed or Side or whatever, and, these aesthetics. People that are super lean always and going to rave parties and making out with girls and shit.

And they think that’s awesome. And they want to do that and okay, fine. You can do that, but just save it until you are, let’s say 18, 19, 20 in that range. And your body can still be growing at that age, but I would definitely not recommend being in a calorie deficit for a long period of time when you’re younger.

So if you’re 14, 15, 16, you, and you’re a guy, for instance. You do not want to, if you just naturally, like I’ve known kids growing up that were always seven, 8 percent [00:18:00] body fat, just never had any fat on their body. That’s just how they didn’t try to be that way. That actually ate for them. What felt like a plenty of food.

They weren’t restricting their calories. They weren’t even counting their calories. That’s just the way they are or were genetically whatever, good for them. Fuck them. But that’s not most people. So when I hear from teenagers that are not like that and they want to be like that, they want to be super lean and so I have to tell them, don’t just save that for later.

Don’t do that right now. Your goal is a teenager, and for girls in terms of body fat percentage. Body fat percentages, it would be the equivalent of that for girls would be that 16, 17, 18 percent range. It’s very lean and it requires one. It’s going to require quite a bit of cutting to get there.

And then also it requires when you’re maintaining that it’s going to be tricky. You’re going to be in a calorie deficit at least several days out of the week, whether you like it or not, because your energy, your daily energy expenditure fluctuates and we’re just. We’re estimating it and the body also adapts it’s TDE based on how much food you’re eating.

[00:19:00] Even if you were to be really strict and you were to calculate your TDE and you were to eat just that amount of calories every day, you realistically, you’re going to go slightly over some days, you’re going to go slightly under some days that TDE calculation is not going to be a hundred percent accurate.

That actually may be a slight deficit that your body then just has to compensate a little bit for, and it. It’s just, I really recommend that as a teenager, let’s just focus on being in the healthy athletic body fat range, which is about 10 to 15 percent for guys and 20 to 25 percent for girls, because that’s going to allow you to eat plenty of food.

Also, yeah, something I should mention is that when you’re very lean, unless you’re on drugs, which we’re going to talk about also you’re not going to eat, be able to eat as much food. And stay that lean as you will be able to eat at a higher body fat percentage and stay at that body fat percentage.

That’s just the way it is. So you know, like I’m about maybe 8 percent body fat. That’s where I hang out and I eat about 27, 2800 calories a day. But if I were 10, 11, [00:20:00] 12 percent body fat, I know for a fact, cause I’ve done it before I could eat 3000 to 30, maybe even a higher, actually I’d say 32 to 3300 calories a day.

And I would stay I would stay at that 10, 11, 12 percent body fat range. So again, the when your body’s growing as a simple rule, more food is better. It doesn’t mean you have to force yourself to overeat and force yourself to get fatter and gain weight and so forth. But you do want to, you don’t want to be restricting your food.

And I also. Don’t like the idea of kids getting too caught up with counting calories and counting macros and doing meal plans and, developing a weird relationship with food at that age. I think it’s save, save the eating neurosis. For later. And it I joke it’s not, I think that you can have a healthy relationship with food while planning, tracking your intake.

But as a kid, I would much rather see you like, I’d much rather when my kid’s, a teenager or kids are, if [00:21:00] I’m, if I have more kids, I have one. When he’s a teenager, I’d much rather see younger people just listen to their bodies. Realize that your body we. When you’re planning calories and tracking, all that we do is like a hack in a sense around the body’s natural mechanisms to force it to do something it doesn’t want to do.

Your body doesn’t actually want to be in a calorie deficit to lose fat. It wants to just stay where it’s at. It doesn’t want to be in a calorie surplus to gain fat. It just wants to stay where it’s at. And so it has hormones that it uses. Primarily it’s hormones is, are the primary influencers.

There are other things as well, though, other physiological mechanisms to regulate how much your body, how much food it wants is regulated by these hormones and these other factors. So that’s why if you follow simple dietary rules, like you eat a high protein diet, so you eat somewhere around. Let’s say 0.

8 grams or a gram of protein per pound. You get enough fat in your diet, which should be somewhere around probably 0. 3 grams per pound. And then the rest of your calories are coming from carbs and you are eating a couple [00:22:00] servings of fruits and vegetables every day, which I didn’t do as a teenager.

I’ll admit I do now. And I definitely recommend it for health reasons and also for satiety reasons and for training. There’s also going to be set for training your gut to work the way that you want it to work. When you get older, you don’t want to develop. If you, if all, if you eat way too much sugar and way too much junk food while your body isn’t developing and your gut is developing, because your gut, it’s a very complex environment.

You have a huge amount of bacteria and they do a lot of different things and it can, and it influences the brain and mood and all these things. So if you are eat very poorly for when you’re younger, You’re going to find it very hard when you get older to change your eating habits. There’s the psychological side, but there’s also a physiological side.

So if you can focus on getting the majority of your calories from nutritious foods when you’re young, you’re going to be very happy when you get older because it’s going to be very easy. And when you get older, it gets more important. When you’re a teenager, your body’s invincible. You can just eat McDonald’s every day and play sports and [00:23:00] lift weights and do whatever you want and feel fine.

Most people. But trust me, when you get older, that’s not the case. I’m 31 and I don’t do that ever. I don’t eat fast food ever, whatever. But I can tell you that, I, I do a lot to take care of my body in terms of health where I’m, I eat a lot of nutritious foods. I’m exercising a lot.

And I take some supplements as well that have some things that are in. improve immune function and improve, insulin sensitivity and improve blood flow and improve heart health and blah, blah, blah. And it has paid off in that I have very high energy levels throughout the day. I don’t need very much sleep five or six hours a night.

I naturally that’s just after that’s I wake up after five, six hours and that’s it. I’m done. I can, I play golf, I play ice hockey, I lift weights. I’m able to get a lot from my body, so I put a lot into it. That’s what I would like to see for you. And the sooner you can get into the habits that produce that when you get older, the better, because what a lot of people do is when they’re teenagers, they abuse their bodies quite a bit, [00:24:00] bad diets, no exercise, alcohol, drugs, not sleeping, blah, blah, blah, but they still can function because the body’s that resilient when it’s young.

But then those, they continue those habits into their 20s, things start to dip. And then by the end of their 20s and my age, their bodies are just straight broken. I would much rather have, coming back to the original point, a teenager learn to eat intuitively. Meaning follow some simple rules, eat enough protein, get in your fruits and vegetables, eat whole grain foods, stay away from overly processed foods, make that a small percentage of your diet and eat on feel.

Let’s say if you just start with three big meals a day and some snacks, when you feel like having snacks, that is a much healthier way to approach diet, both physically and psychologically. I think. And if you do that and you exercise and you’re playing sports and you’re doing whatever, then you will have no problem staying in the athletic body fat percentage range, which you’re going to look [00:25:00] great.

A 16 year old boy with some muscle and at 10 percent body fat is like a superhero God at, you, if you’re that person and you’re looking at some of the people my age or older that have been weightlifting for 15 plus years. Maybe on steroids super shredded or whatever. And you look at yourself and you’re like, God, I look bad.

That’s realized that’s our subjective. That’s just subjective. Relativism at work. Factually speaking, objectively speaking, if you’re a teenager and if you’re, or if you’re a girl and you’re at 2021 22 percent body fat and you have some muscle and you’re going to look great and you don’t just save the, yeah.

The adult look that you see in adults, save it for when you’re an adult. It’s worth saying though, if you are overweight or obese, then I do recommend cutting. So calorie deficit, just standard, you can go on legionathletics. com search for calories. You’ll see an article about how many calories should I eat?

I’ve written about, you can search for macro on muscle for life and you’ll find a good article on how to calculate your macros. I do recommend. So if you’re a guy or [00:26:00] your son or whatever, and Let’s say like 20 percent body fat and up it is I think in your best interests to get down somewhere to somewhere between 10 and 15 percent body fat just for health reasons.

And for girls I would say maybe 28, 29, 30 percent body fat and up again, it’s it’s going to be more healthy to get down to the 20, 25 percent range. And then just. Stay there. So that is the one exception to the rule of don’t cut really spend as little time as in a calorie deficit as possible.

It’s the general rule, but if you are overweight or obese, then I do recommend you get to that athletic body fat percentage range because it’s just going to be. Better for your overall health and your body and your performance in your sports and in the gym and everything and self confidence too.

It’s going to make a difference. All right. So now let’s talk about training. I think that this is my general recommendation for teenagers. I think that strength training is a great place to start. Go on legionathletics. com and search for strength. You’ll see an article I wrote where I go over strength [00:27:00] training as a whole and then I go over some of the more popular strength training programs.

The one that I generally recommend for teenagers is just starting strength. It’s been around forever. It’s simple. It doesn’t take that much time. It works. It’s just a great program for people new to weightlifting in general. The only caveat is because it’s a strength training program it is centric.

The volume on lower body is going to be higher. And that means that you’re going to see more development and growth in your lower body than your upper body. Just keep that in mind. But don’t, that’s not necessarily a problem. I would say you could put in a year on starting strength and you’re going to do great.

And then from there you may want to change depending on what you’re, why are you in the gym? So if you’re in the gym just because you want to look good, there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s also very healthy and there are many other reasons to do it. But if you’re driving motivation is to look good and have a great physique, then I would say maybe something like my program, my pro, bigger than the strongest for guys, thinner, stronger, thinner, stronger for [00:28:00] girls is going to be better for that in that the volume, the upper body volume, the lower body volume is a bit different because for guys, obviously.

You’re going to find that when you get into weightlifting your legs your lower half develops much quicker than your upper half because mainly because your legs are your strongest muscle group and you can overload them and they respond very well to weightlifting and so forth. So if you though want to have.

An aesthetic type of physique, if that’s what you’re going for, there are some things, there are some drawbacks to strength training programs. One is that is the difference in lowered upper body volume. And then two is there are some isolation type exercises that help bring up smaller muscle groups like your shoulders, like your lats like your arms.

that are going to make progress on a strength training program, but are not going to, they’re going to fall behind your bigger muscle groups that really get trained hard. Like your, for instance your chest is gonna grow. Most people find that when, if they do a few years of strength training, [00:29:00] they have a decent chest.

Their shoulders and arms are too small, given their chest the, they have a decent back, but their lats are usually underdeveloped and they have a very big lower body, big legs, big butt. And that’s the strength training. Look, a lot of people, some people, they don’t care. They think that’s cool.

They like to do the strength training. Some people, not so much. Strength training is a great place to start. It’s a great introduction. Again, starting strength, there’s a book. It’s pretty technical. If you are, if you really want to dive into the technical details then you’re going to like it.

And if you don’t, you’re, there are certain portions which are going to be right over your head and that’s okay. Again, if you go to legionathletics. com and search for strength, you’ll see an article I wrote where I break down here are the big parts of strength training. Here’s how or starting strength.

Here’s how it works. Here’s how you do it. And then you can pick up the book as well. It’s just going to, it’s just a, it’s a dense read. It’s a dry read. And there are, you’re going to find that if you really want to understand it, you’re going to be on the internet quite a bit. Googling terms and, trying to understand what he is saying.

Strong lifts is another good strength training program, [00:30:00] similar to starting strength. And I wouldn’t say one is necessarily better than the other. I generally recommend starting strength just cause it’s been around forever. And the creator, Mark Ripto is he, he just knows his stuff.

He’s been in this game for decades and he, I’ve had him on the podcast. He’s very knowledgeable and that’s just the program that, I say, Hey, go start there. Another benefit of starting with strength training is a lot of teenagers also play sports. And most sports are, you are going to benefit more from lower body development than upper body development.

The heavyweight lifting that you do in a program like starting strength, it doesn’t just increase your strength, but increase your power too, meaning your explosiveness. So if you play soccer, for instance that’s what you need. You need to be able to explode. You need to run fast.

And of course you have the technical aspects of ball handling and kick shooting and all that stuff. But that lower body. Explosiveness and that having that strong core, it’s going to help you a lot if you play, football, same story. The only, I think I’m not really, I don’t follow football much, but I would [00:31:00] guess the positions that need upper body strength are limited probably to like the linemen, right?

Cause they do a lot of pushing force, the lower body strength too, but most most, Foot positions in football are going to benefit a lot more from having a powerful lower body than a powerful upper body. So you can run down, basketball, same thing having that explosiveness and being able to jump higher.

Obviously it’s going to help a lot and that helps a lot in a lot of sports. So that’s another benefit. And I actually, there’s a local. I was just talking to someone from high school here that they want to start a weightlifting program for their football team. And the coach was talking to me, what I recommend should they do my program?

And said, No, not really because my program it’s a hybrid between strength training and body building. It’s like strength training But to, but addressing some of the deficiencies in terms of how your body develops by adding in some bodybuilding that is irrelevant to these kids. These kids are 15, 16, 17, they’ve never lifted weights before and they’re doing it for football.

Starting strength. [00:32:00] Just do that. The, you also have a, what was his name? Bill star, I believe he had a, he had, that was that’s where a lot of this that’s where strong lifts. Came from was Bill Starr wrote a book about football training and that’s what it was. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of squatting, dead lifting and pressing overhead, pressing and bench pressing.

And I forget the name of it. It’s like the strong will survive or something. I don’t remember. Actually I have the book. I just don’t remember. It’s been a while since I’ve read it. But so that’s also another benefit of starting with strength training. So a couple other points here. Why I said this earlier, but I want to say it again.

Be a real stickler on form. Don’t let your friends browbeat you into messing with weights that are way too heavy or, go get another rep, get another app. And when you know that your form is falling apart, when you feel like that, and again if you read starting strength, And you really study the diagrams and understand how to do these exercises properly and then do them and get that feel.

Maintaining that form is super important. So I will abort a set if I feel like my form is slipping too much. A little, there’s a little bit of wiggle room [00:33:00] obviously, but if I’m dead lifting and I feel like This bar is not coming up without really having to round my back and do some things that I’m not, I shouldn’t be doing.

I just put it down. It’s not worth it. And okay, the likelihood of actually getting hurt is low. But if I do that frequently, the overall probability is now quite high. It’s if you, when you’re living dangerously, it doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily taking huge risks every day.

It can mean that you are taking a lot of little risks. You’re doing a lot of little risky things every day where the probability of. Each individual thing coming back to, to hurt you is low, but you’re doing enough little things that are gonna, that have that low probability that there’s actually now a high probability of being hurt.

So same idea with weightlifting is we want to put ourselves in as few situations as possible where there’s really any likelihood of getting hurt. We wanna minimize the amount, the total amount of probability that we’re gonna get hurt. And you do that by maintaining proper form. And, I’ve that’s all, this is why I squat in a squat rack.

Because I’ve had it many times where, heavyweight [00:34:00] and I’m trying to try to squeeze out one more rep and I’m down and I’m down in the hole and I’m trying to get up and I feel my knees moving in and I feel like my back is rounding a little bit and then I just sit it down. I just, sit the weight down on the safety bars and end the set.

That is just a, what a much better way to go about lifting and then Trying to, just do anything I can where I’m wobbling to try to get the weight up. And then who knows what can happen. So the next thing is don’t touch steroids. There are, you’re going to hear if you go on the internet and read about steroids, you can hear a lot of things you’re going to hear.

Some people are going to say they’re super dangerous and they’re going to ruin your endocrine system. And that’s it. And then you can hear other people say that they’re not dangerous and the dangers are overblown and over exaggerated. And you should watch this documentary. We should do this. And there are, I’ve written about this.

If you go to muscle for life and you search for steroid, then you can see an article I wrote and there are some, there are valid, some Val, I would say that there’s more validity to the latter than the former steroids are not as dangerous or at least certain steroids. I’d [00:35:00] say that. So like testosterone is not as dangerous as some people would have you believe, but at your age, it is terrible.

So you like if I at 30, we’re on, let’s say a TRT dose of testosterone the worst case scenario is I’m slightly increasing my risk of prostate cancer, which again, that association is now it’s it’s a controversial up in the air debated thing. And there are things you can do to mitigate that risk.

And fine, whatever. And of course it shuts down natural production and it’s not a, I, I have no interest in being on testosterone or taking steroids at all. But if I were to do that is not the same as you doing that at 15 or 16 when your endocrine system is developing, you can really screw your body up.

So really do not touch steroids. It is not necessary. And it is the risk reward ratio is really bad. You have a very high risk of causing permanent damage to your body for a reward that who cares? Okay, you would gain muscle and strength faster. That’s [00:36:00] what you would get out of it.

Who cares? You can you’re 15, you’re 16. You have your entire life ahead of you. You have, if you start, I can tell you this. If you start weightlifting at 15 or 16, just do it right. Eat well, no drugs. You don’t have to necessarily even take any supplements. By the time, let’s say it’s, by the time you’re 2021, by your 21st birthday, you’re going to, if you just stick with it and be smart about it and don’t take any long periods off due to any injury or just taking off time or whatever, you just just keep going consistent.

It’s like how you go to school every day. If you just keep it, keep on the grind by 2021. You’re gonna look amazing. You’re gonna really, I, you could build your the dream body. You could have the physique, whatever you really want right now, unless you want to be a massive.

Bodybuilder type of person, which that’s a whole nother thing. And that’s, you can’t do that naturally. And it takes also top tier genetics and, I just wouldn’t recommend even thinking about that. But if you just want to be like a fitness model looking type of person where you have a good amount of muscle.

And you’re [00:37:00] lean and everything has good proportions and also be athletic. Then you start at 15, 16 by 21, you’re there. And then there are plenty of things you can do from there. Obviously it’s not oh, you’re done now. And what do you do now? You can maintain it. You can start doing different types of workouts to challenge yourself in different ways.

And, whatever that you can worry about it then, but yeah, so with steroids, yeah, you could do that faster, but you are addicting, you’re going to become addicted. You just will. It’s not that there’s so much, it’s not the physiological addiction, but I’ve spoken with a lot of steroid users and the ones that are a bit more self aware and just honest with themselves will say that it’s the psychological addiction is what sucks.

And that’s where, they feel that. When they feel so much better on drugs than off drugs that it’s very hard for them to just completely stop because, the risks it’s like, why do people smoke so much? They think that when we know for a fact that, every year of every day, let’s say as you get older, every decade, as [00:38:00] you get older, if you’re still smoking, your risk of heart disease and cancer goes up dramatically.

You can tell people know that smokers know that, but. They just think it’s not gonna happen to me. It’s the not gonna happen to me syndrome, it’s the same thing with steroid users. Sure, they know that some of these drugs are genotoxic, not testosterone, but that you’re damaging your DNA, you’re increasing the risk of cancer, it’s hard on your liver, it’s this, that, whatever.

And they just go yeah, but, there’s this guy online, and he’s been on drugs for 40 years, and he’s fine, or I know this one guy, so it’s not gonna happen to me. Until it does. And maybe, of course it’s not guaranteed, but I, again, I’m all about not putting myself in a high risk situations of developing diseases that are going to make me suffer and kill me.

So don’t take steroids. That’s just the bottom line and don’t let yourself get pressured into it. Because it’s just not worth it. And it also increases your risk of injury in the gym because you’re going to people that are on drugs, your muscles gain a lot of strength very fast, [00:39:00] but your tendons and ligaments don’t keep up with that.

So you’re gonna feel like you can, add that 50 to the bar. And your muscles are gonna be able to, move it and engage and then, up your joint blows out or whatever. So that’s another reason to not take steroids. So then I mentioned supplements earlier and my general stance with supplementation in teenagers is I am I lean again, I lean away from it.

Just, I say, I guess you don’t need supplements, nobody needs supplements and there’s not a great reason why there’s certain supplements like a protein powder. Okay, fine. Protein powder is convenient. It helps you hit your protein needs. There’s nothing wrong with a teenager taking a good protein powder.

It’s not necessary. They can just eat food. I know when I was a teenager, I didn’t take any protein powders. And I just like to eat food. So I just ate food, but I’m fine with a protein powder. Creatine use is very common with all. With weightlifters of any age, the thing is with creatine and teenagers, physiologically speaking, there probably isn’t a reason why it would be harmful, but [00:40:00] there’s not any specific research on it that I know about on, on people under 18 years old, all the creatine research that we have.

Which we have hundreds and hundreds of studies and we know it’s a safe molecule for adults, but we don’t have any research on teenagers. So my general recommendation and creatine is just no, because again, I don’t know of a good reason why it would be harmful, but I’m not comfortable enough with that to say and then, Hey, yeah, sure, whatever.

And, just take it because also one of the things with supplementation in general is people tend to overdose things. So they think that, the standard creatine protocol is five grams a day. There are a lot of people though, that even though they might hear from someone like me saying you’re not going to get more out of 10 grams a day, trust me, or if you do, it’s going to be minuscule, it’s not worth the added expense. They’re still going to do 10 grams a day, or they’re going to do 20 grams a day or whatever. And I think that type of behavior is probably more likely with teenagers who are very, Hey, I’m invincible, I can do anything kind of thing.

I would say [00:41:00] no to creatine. It’s not necessary. Yes, it does. It is a good supplement. It does work and it does help you build muscle and strength and so forth, but save it to save it for again. It like with when I was talking about earlier with getting super shredded, save creatine for when you’re a little bit older, a good multivitamin is not a bad idea.

Again, a multivitamin is not going to replace the need for fruits and vegetables in your diet because fruits and vegetables don’t just provide essential vitamins and minerals. They also provide other molecules called cofactors and that are, you just won’t get in a multivitamin and are that those, these additional molecules.

Are the main reason why you can’t just supplement your nutrients. You have to also eat nutritious foods, a good multivitamin. I obviously would recommend mine and if you go to legionathletics. com and look on supplements, look at triumph, that’s my multivitamin and read the sales page and you’ll see why do I recommend, why do I recommend mine over others beyond it’s just mine.

That’s not my sales pitch isn’t well, mine is just better because I made it. It goes pretty in depth and talks about multivitamins in general and. How I [00:42:00] went about creating mine and so forth. The reason for taking it is if there are any holes in your diet, which there are most teenagers, every teenager that I know, their diet is pretty Swiss cheesy.

There are, there, there are complete food groups that just are not really in there very much like fruits and vegetables, for instance. And in some cases, whole grains, cause there’s a lot of processed grains and then processed foods and sugars and whatever. So there are key. Micronutrients that they’re just not getting in, in, in large amounts that their bodies could do better with, or could do better if they were getting so a good multivitamin is going to provide those nutrients and at least hopefully plug some of those holes and a fish oil is also not a bad idea.

If you go on muscle for life and you search for, it’s actually hard to find, but we’re going to be revamping muscle for life completely and improving the search function. But the name of the article is how many grams of fat per day, I believe, how many grams of fat should you eat per day?

Something like that. If you put it into Google as well, muscle life. How many grams of fat per day? It’ll come up. [00:43:00] You can read more about why I recommend fish oil. There are a certain, there’s a certain type of fat called an omega three fatty acid that is very important for your body’s health. It is involved in many different physiological mechanisms in the body.

And unless you eat a fair amount of fatty fish. You are not going to be getting very much, or there are some plant based sources of it, but again, there’s like flax, for instance, but the conversion, the flax is just not a great source of omega threes, and there are some other more obscure plant based sources of mega threes, but you’re probably not getting, you’re probably not eating any of them.

So the easiest thing to do is supplement with fish oil you want about, let’s say one to. three grams of omega 3 fatty acids per day. And that sounds like very little, it is very little, but it makes a huge difference in your body. It’s very important. And the last supplement that I would recommend looking at is vitamin D.

Vitamin D is, it’s not just a vitamin, it’s actually a steroid hormone. Every about every cell in the body has a receptor for vitamin D. So it interacts. In so many different ways in the [00:44:00] body and vitamin D deficiencies are correlated with many different types of diseases and dysfunction. You want to make sure that you are giving your body enough vitamin D.

And again, this is hard because the main way that your body gets its vitamin D is being in the sun. And so if you have, I believe it’s I’m in Florida, so we have we’re closer to the equator, obviously, than we’re really anyone else. And I guess you probably have some people in Texas that have sun like this as well.

So this is strong sun in terms of UV rays. And in this type of sun, you would need to have about 70 percent of your skin exposed. For, I believe I want to say about 15 minutes a day that would be enough. And then if I were to do that, then I probably wouldn’t have to supplement. Although my body genetically does have a heightened need for vitamin D.

So I still apply extra supplement with some, but the point is though, who does that? Who, I’m not, who goes sunbathing for 15, 20 minutes a day. Very few people. We work, it’s just not. It’s just not practical. So instead I supplement and a good place to start would be about [00:45:00] 2000. I use a day for teenagers as a good place to start.

And if you really want to know what your body’s vitamin D needs are, you can get blood tested. And and then you’ll know for a fact that you could take 2000. I use a day, get blood tested and then they’ll tell you okay, that looks good. Or they’re going to say, I doubt they’ll say you need less.

Just because now we know that yeah. Certain levels of D3 in the blood that were once previously thought is sufficient are now thought of as deficient. So if anything, they’re probably, you’re going to hear, okay, you’re fine, or we’re going to, you need to take more vitamin D. But the, that’s it’s just.

So getting that in at an, at a young age is going to help tremendously with your body’s overall development and just with your overall health. Okay. So the last point here as a teenager is make sure you’re getting plenty of sleep. And I mentioned earlier that I don’t sleep very much and that’s how my body is.

And also I’m 30 though. When I was a teenager, I was sleeping, I don’t know, eight hours a night minimum. And then on the weekends, I’d go out late and then I’d be sleeping 10 hours. I was a teenager. And do not restrict your sleep is the point. And if you want to know how much sleep your body needs, then you [00:46:00] can on the weekends, just don’t set an alarm.

This is also going to be affected though by your weekly schedule. If you’re, if you are restricting your sleep during the week and then you’re catching up on the weekend That is that, that, that’s what’s happening. So you might sleep longer on the weekend, but like the standard way that’s recommended, if you want to really know how much body, how much sleep your body needs is if you’re on vacation for two weeks is to go to bed at a normal hour every night, don’t set an alarm.

And in the beginning, if your body needs to catch up on sleep, you might find you sleep more than usual, but after a week or so you should see that you start sleeping in a, in. a certain amount every night. It might be seven hours, maybe eight hours. In my case, again, I’ve been sleeping no more than six hours a night for I don’t know, years now and that my body, I wake up for my alarm and I’m awake.

So that’s just the way that’s. And when I’m on vacation, it’s the same thing. I see about six hours unless I’ve been up very late and doing, that multiple times then I have to catch up. But. That’s how you could know how much sleep your body needs, but that’s not just necessary. Just make sure I would plan in probably eight, nine, even 10 hours of sleep and attends and maybe a bit [00:47:00] high.

But if you plan for eight or nine hours of sleep every night and of course it’s fine. Sometimes you’re sleeping, you’re going to sleep less that happens, but you don’t want to make a habit of restricting your sleep because again, this has a pretty devastating effects in the body and hormonally and and in, in many different ways.

And it can, it accumulates over time. The purpose of. Getting enough sleep is supporting your body’s natural growth processes. Your body is, there’s a lot going on in it and it’s very busy. And especially if you’re playing sports and you’re lifting weights and you’re being active, it has to recover from all that.

And it has to continue to build itself up. Eating enough food is very important. Eating of protein is very important and getting of sleep is very important. That’s everything. That’s the advice. Now I have something I can just send all the teens that are, that write me instead of having to like copy and paste the whole thing.

Now I can just send this video. And that’s everything. Putting your questions down below or better yet reach out to me on Twitter or Facebook or email me or drop a comment in the AMA on most for life. It’s linked on the homepage because [00:48:00] man, managing YouTube comments is tough.

It’s not almost not worth the time because the system just doesn’t work very well. Whereas I have a much better system for managing all that other stuff. Hope you like this and yeah, that’s it. I’ll see you next week.