Why Strength Training Is Important for Youth Athletes
- Dr. Kelsey Changsing, PT, DPT
- Jul 31
- 8 min read
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I once treated a volleyball athlete in physical therapy who kept spraining their ankle.
When I asked what their training looked like, they basically told me they did volleyball drills, scrimmages, and some conditioning like running. What surprised me was that they weren't doing any strength training.
At first, I figured maybe it was because they were playing volleyball recreationally. I figured maybe more elite youth sports programs incorporated strength training as part of their regular training.
Then, over Thanksgiving, I had a conversation with my cousin about her son, who plays ice hockey and was experiencing some hip pain.
For context, her son attends an elite hockey boarding school. I don't know much about youth hockey development, but basically, he's legit.
When I asked what his training looked like, though, I heard almost the same thing: hockey practices, games, some conditioning, but not much structured strength training.
Around the same time, I had a conversation with a local speed development coach who told me that strength training culture in youth sports can actually be somewhat regional. For example, youth athletic development is really well established in Southern California, but not nearly as much here in Las Vegas.
This led me to wonder if youth athletes are actually being physically prepared for the demands of their sport.
The Benefits of Strength Training
One of the hills I'll die on is that everybody needs to be doing some form of strength training. Every single person, whether they're old or young, can benefit from getting stronger.
But I know there's historically been some hesitation around strength training for kids, with one of the biggest concerns being that lifting weights can stunt their growth.
That idea has been linked to reports from the 1960s involving children performing heavy manual labor, which obviously isn't the same thing as a properly designed strength training program.
More recent research has found that appropriately programmed and supervised resistance training is safe for children and adolescents. In fact, organizations including the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), American Academy of Pediatrics, and International Olympic Committee support resistance training for youth when it is appropriately programmed and supervised.
So let's look at three benefits of strength training for youth athletes, why it still isn't universally incorporated into youth sports programs, and what youth strength training should actually focus on.
Youth Sports Are More Demanding Than They Used to Be
Youth sports today look very different than they did when I was in high school over 15 years ago.
Athletes are specializing in a single sport earlier, participating year-round, and accumulating higher overall training volumes.
Those are all potential risk factors for overuse injuries.
Overuse injuries occur when the repeated demands placed on an area of the body exceed its capacity to tolerate those demands. And unlike an injury caused by a collision with another athlete or a fall, these injuries typically develop gradually as those stresses accumulate.
In fact, about half of injuries in youth sports are related to overuse.
As a side-note, the rehab bias in me thought injury prevention would be one of the biggest reasons to convince people that youth athletes need better physical preparation. But according to my brother-in-law, athletes and their families often care more about sports performance than reducing injuries.
So let's start there.
1. Strength Training Can Improve Sports Performance
Besides improving general strength, resistance training in youth athletes has also been shown to improve things like:
Vertical jump performance
Sprint speed
Change-of-direction or agility performance
Other sport-specific performance measures
Regular practice is great for developing skills, tactics, and sport-specific movement patterns.
But just practicing a sport doesn't necessarily develop the strength, landing mechanics, deceleration ability, force production, or, most importantly to my rehab brain, tissue tolerance required to perform the sport.
A volleyball player can get a lot of practice jumping during volleyball practice. But repeatedly jumping isn't necessarily the same thing as developing the strength and landing mechanics needed to tolerate hundreds of jumps over the course of practices, games, and tournaments.
Practicing a sport develops the skills needed to play that sport, while strength training helps develop the physical capacity to support those skills.
2. Strength Training Can Help Reduce Injury Risk
While this might not seem as important as improving performance, especially for families spending a significant amount of money on travel sports and essentially "paying to play," it's important to remember that getting injured will ultimately affect performance too.
An injured athlete can't perform at their best, and a significant enough injury can take them out of practices and competition completely.
Of course, not every sports injury is preventable. Kids are going to collide with each other, land awkwardly, fall, and experience injuries that couldn't realistically have been prevented.
But remember that about half of all youth sports injuries are related to overuse.
Structured injury-prevention programs that incorporate components such as strength work, flexibility, and stability or balance exercises have been shown to reduce injury risk by around 30%.
Strength training is an important component of physically preparing athletes for the demands they're repeatedly placing on their bodies.
3. Strength Training Helps Build General Athletic Capacity
Ultimately, if a youth athlete wants to participate in their sport long term, general physical preparation is just as important as sports practice and skills lessons.
The goal isn't to make a kid better at squatting or lifting weights but to develop the underlying physical qualities they need to participate in their sport.
That can mean building enough leg strength to produce and absorb force when sprinting and changing direction. It can mean developing better balance and control on one leg. Or it can mean improving an athlete's ability to land repeatedly without their muscles fatiguing as quickly.
The exact demands will vary by sport, but the underlying idea is the same: athletes need enough physical capacity to tolerate what their sport asks them to do.
Strength Training Isn't Necessarily a Magic Solution
There is some important nuance here.
Strength training is important, but it's not a magic solution that will prevent every sports injury.
Injury risk is influenced by a lot of different factors, including sleep, nutrition, overall training volume, growth spurts, and early sport specialization.
Strength training also adds to an athlete's total workload, which means simply piling additional workouts onto an already overloaded athlete isn't necessarily better.
The goal is to prepare the athlete for their sport while also giving their body enough opportunity to recover from that training.
So strength training should be viewed as one piece of a much bigger picture of youth athletic development.
Why Don't More Youth Sports Programs Include Strength Training?
If strength training can improve performance and help prepare athletes for the demands of their sport, why isn't it universally incorporated into youth sports?
There are probably several reasons.
One of the biggest is simply limited practice time. Coaches understandably want to spend their available time working on sport-specific skills, tactics, and scrimmaging. When practice time is already limited, strength training can easily get pushed aside.
Another major barrier is access to strength and conditioning professionals.
Not every youth sports coach has experience designing strength programs, and not every team or school has the resources to hire someone who does.
This can become even more apparent in less affluent areas. Families with more financial resources may be able to hire a private strength and conditioning coach if their athlete's team doesn't provide one. Obviously, that isn't realistic for every family.
Two other, probably lesser, reasons are misconceptions about safety and regional culture, which I think go hand in hand.
I think fewer people today believe that strength training is dangerous for kids, but that misconception is definitely still out there. Some parents and coaches still worry that lifting weights could cause injuries or stunt a child's growth, despite research supporting appropriately supervised youth resistance training.
And if those beliefs are common among coaches and parents in a particular area, there's naturally going to be less demand for strength training as part of youth sports. On the other hand, in areas where youth athletic development is more established, strength and conditioning may be viewed as a normal part of becoming a well-rounded athlete.
What Should Strength Training for Youth Athletes Look Like?
When people think of strength training, I think they sometimes picture athletes maxing out their lifts for attention on social media.
But that's not what strength training actually is. Strength training is simply using resistance training to build strength.
And with youth athletes, the focus for strength training will be on proper form and movement quality and improving their coordination, balance, and basic strength. The priority is on learning how to move well rather than seeing how much weight they can lift.
As athletes develop better technique and become stronger, resistance and exercise complexity can gradually increase.
Their overall sports schedule also needs to be taken into consideration. An athlete in the middle of a competitive season may need less strength-training volume than they would during the offseason when their sports-specific training volume is lower.
Strength training should complement their sport and not simply add more work for the sake of doing more.
Are Youth Athletes Prepared for the Demands of Their Sport?
This brings me back to the volleyball athlete who originally got me thinking about this.
Their recurrent ankle sprains made me question whether their ankle had enough capacity for what volleyball was repeatedly asking it to do.
Volleyball involves a lot of jumping, landing, running, and changing direction. If an athlete is repeatedly exposing their ankle to those demands without developing enough strength, balance, landing mechanics, and overall capacity outside of practice, the demands of the sport will eventually exceed what their body can tolerate.
Many youth athletes spend a lot of time practicing their sport without spending nearly as much time preparing their bodies for the demands of that sport.
But incorporating appropriately programmed strength training, along with lifestyle factors such as adequate sleep and nutrition, can help improve sports performance and build the physical capacity young athletes need to continue participating in their sport
long term.
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References:
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