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This is great, but be wary of your son doing too much muscle building when he is so young. I have heard from several sources that it may stunt growth. Never see

• catch23 17y ago
  and what are these "sources"?
  • elai 17y ago
    It comes from an assertion that _heavy_ weights can damage a child's growth plates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphyseal_plate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphyseal_plate) inside their bones. High rep bodyweight exercises like pushups and squats are not going to cause that. (http://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/Growth_Plate_Injuries/default.asp#3 http://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/Growth_Plate_Injuries/d...)
    • a-priori 17y ago
      When I did a coaching program for Judo (NCCP Level I, to be exact), I was taught to never allow pre-pubescent children to do strength training. Callisthenics are okay, because the resistence is limited by the child's body weight, but weightlifting of any kind is not. Something about building up too much muscle around the joints, leading to arthritis later on. EDIT: I just went looking for sources for this, and I cannot find any. Unless someone has better Google-fu than me, take what I said above as an extremely suspect anecdote. It seems that the major risks are that coaches will push children too hard, causing damage to muscles, tendons and so on.
    • pageman 17y ago
      there's also an issue of Rhabdomyolysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabdomyolysis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabdomyolysis
    • solson 17y ago
      He doesn't lift weights, just push ups, squats, jumping jacks, etc.
  • pchristensen 17y ago
    I'll throw an anecdote in - I started lifting weights when I was 12 and I'm the shortest male on either side of my family.
• physio 17y ago
  This is a very old but persistent urban myth. It comes from some study in the 60s or 70s showing that Chinese peasant children who were malnourished and had to carry heavy loads, e.g. water buckets, had stunted growth. The key there is malnourishment. Somehow this morphed into the meme that "lifting weights stunts growth!" This was debunked in articles in Muscle & Fitness, for one; I don't have the issues anymore, but on the flip side, the fact that NOBODY has a reference for "stunted growth" should be rather telling. In fact, there is not even a proposed mechanism whereby muscular loads would close bone growth plates. Even female gymnasts, who come pretty close to the textbook definition of being malnourished and overworked, usually grow too big to continue. For the most part only the genetically teensy stay small enough long enough to make it. Muscular workloads do not close growth plates. It doesn't matter if you are lifting "heavy" or "light". The key is whether you have adequate nutrition BEFORE the window closes on your longitudinal growth, so that during your "growth spurts" there is enough material there to incorporate into new growth. In fact, strenuous exercise spikes HGH, and combined with the increase in appetite, would likely produce MORE growth (assuming plenty of food) than seen in sedentary children.
• xiaoma 17y ago
  Just look at what it did to Shaq.