Why A Professional Youth Weightlifting Program Cannot Be A Watered Down Adult Program
When considering starting any Olympic Weightlifting program it is important to look at the specific population you’re interested in training. Based on your population choice a plan of action must be developed to cater to that population as the needs of men vs women vs masters populations in Olympic Weightlifting vary considerably.
Many times a few kids train alongside adults or their parents, because they want to mimic them and because it’s a ton of fun for kids. This is great and an excellent way to introduce kids to the sport and to allow them to have fun with their parents.
The sticky point is what happens when more and more kids and their parents come in specifically looking for a program that is catered to children. Now the needs of the kids and their specific ages must be addressed to develop a competent and well-run program.
Kids and youth in general especially females can tolerate a lot more volume than adults and learn in a much different way. Because of this youth can do much more reps to develop technique than adults can ever dream of and the recovery times between training sessions is substantially lower and they can also be over coached quite easily if a coach is not used to teaching youth Olympic weightlifters.
Ages must also be taken into consideration and the ability of the child to focus based on where they are at in terms of age and maturity is incredibly important in order to develop these young athletes in an intelligent way. Finally, the training has to be fun for a child. If it’s not fun the child will quickly experience burnout and their weightlifting career will be cut short due to eventually hating the sport.
A Youth Olympic Weightlifting program is an incredibly rewarding and exciting program to build and develop, but many considerations must be taken into account when training youth and they absolutely cannot be trained in the same way as adults with a watered down adult Olympic Weightlifting program.
