One of the stories that often circulates in the gym or in general is that it is certainly not suitable for young people or young adults to engage in intensive strength training. This is because you would then use your growth hormones, which you would need for height growth, for muscle growth. Many people also assume that you have a higher chance of your body growing incorrectly when you train certain muscles more than others. In this article, we will first look at the reaction of young people to strength training itself. Before we delve into the question of whether strength training has any effect on growth during puberty.
Strength training during puberty
In general, exercising is good to maintain good health. Nowadays, many children exercise and move too little and have an inactive lifestyle. This inactive lifestyle can result in a higher risk of chronic diseases, depression, anxiety disorders, or the more well-known problem of overweight.
Strength training can contribute to more explosive strength or better muscle condition for young people. The benefits of strength training at a younger age include developing better balance and coordination. But also an improvement in bone density, improvement of fats in your blood, a healthy weight, more self-confidence, and an improvement in your heart rate. A good example is that when you train your hamstrings, you can significantly reduce the injury sensitivity of this muscle group*2.
The American College of Sports Medicine, the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine, and the American Academy of Pediatrics provide evidence and advise that strength training, when practiced safely, can be very effective for young athletes*3.
Is strength training safe for young athletes?
But now the question is, are there any disadvantages to strength training for young people? We have consulted sources focusing on strength training for young people and young adults. The conclusion we have drawn from various studies is that strength training for young people and young adults can be very good and very efficient. But it is extremely important to note that this is only the case when these young athletes are actually well guided. They need good training schedules and good instructors who ensure that the exercises are performed correctly and with the appropriate weight.
For example, if these young athletes hang weights on their own or use materials and/or devices adjusted for adults, it can be dangerous*4,5,6. It is important for everyone to perform the exercises they do correctly. But this is even more important when they start strength training at a younger age.
It is also advisable for athletes who start training at a younger age to build up the whole strength training process much more slowly. This means, for example, that you should build up the training weight much more slowly and not increase the intensity too quickly.
Effect of strength training on height growth?
We mentioned that we would first analyze strength training for young people before we further explored whether it could also have an influence on the growth of young people or young adults. Now we will further investigate whether it could have any effects on growth.
Since we could not find articles or studies that directly indicated a link between strength training and reducing height growth, we have looked a bit further. We have looked at other (extreme) sports such as gymnastics, wrestling, and sports that last longer. With these more extreme sports, we do see a difference in the height of young athletes. From this, we can conclude that with these (fairly comparable) sports, there is indeed an effect to be seen with the intensive practice of a sport and the height growth influenced by this*7.
It is worth mentioning that in those studies, as discussed in the paragraph above, one clear factor is repeatedly seen when it comes to reducing height growth. It often goes hand in hand with not eating enough. This can be due to weight loss or because they exercise so much that the energy balance is negative. This is because they burn more energy in a day than they can eat on the same day.
What is the effect of strength training on your growth hormones?
During the younger years of your life, especially during puberty, it is the case that the growth hormones in your body increase significantly in almost everyone. Height growth is mainly attributed to your growth hormones.
You can distinguish between different hormones that arise during intensive strength training. For example, you have a hormone called IGF1, which has a positive effect on your growth, but you also have some IGF hormones that have an inhibitory effect*8.
The aforementioned hormone IGF1, which has a positive effect on growth, is the same hormone that increases in value in your body after a good workout. It is true that this level often quickly returns to normal values, but there is still a conflicting relationship here*10. If you assume that there is a kernel of truth in the opinion of a large number of people in the Netherlands.
We can say that it is evident that when you practice truly intensive sports, such as competitive wrestling or sports that you can really engage in for a long time per day, several studies do see a negative effect on growth hormone levels*8. But here again, we see that nutrition plays a major role. Because in wrestling, for example, you occasionally go on a strict diet, but also in those intense long-lasting sports, you burn too much energy in a day
