Is there any scientific truth to the idea that weight training stunts your height or growth? How old must you be that’s considered safe for weight training? Is weight training safe for teens? Today we well uncover the truth and where this myth started in the first place.
In today’s article we are going to investigate the question of whether or not weight training stunts your height or growth.
Let’s first take a look at where it was that this myth got started.
By: Tim Ernst – Founder of Body Blitz Max, 180 Muscle and Barbell/Dumbbell Ripped Muscle Complexes
Study
Back in 1964 in Japan a team of researchers noticed that children performing heavy labor tended to be very short in stature.
The researchers hypothesized that the hours spent lifting and moving heavy weights were responsible for the stunted growth.
Over the years the proposed mechanism became that excessive external loading would cause potential damage to the growth plates at the end of the long bones resulting in their premature closure and stunted height .
However, this was only actually shown to occur in the case of actual bone fracture which is more likely to occur in contact sports like football or hockey.
So the questions is, where did the idea go wrong?
Well first of all correlation does not imply causation and so it seems to be the case that these Japanese child laborers were not only being overworked but also undernourished.
This would be a major factor that seems to be much more central to reaching one’smaximum height potential.
As for the premature closure of the growth plates, it turns out that this hypothesis was not only wrong but actually couldn’t possibly be more wrong.
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A 2014 international consensus position statement (endorsed by really every relevant regulatory body including the American Academy of Pediatrics all the way to the NSC) reported that fears that resistance training would injure the growth plates of youths are not supported by scientific reports or clinical observations which indicate that the mechanical stress placed on the developing growth plates from resistance exercise or high strain eliciting sports such as gymnastics or weightlifting may actually be beneficial for formation growth.
A much more biologically focused review in sports medicine notes that high loads have a critical role in bone mass acquisition during and before puberty.
Also according to the Makino stat theory of bone formation, actions in sports that involved tensile, compressive, shear, bending and torsion stresses on bones can elicit mechanostat-related mechanisms during growth.
You would have an osteogenic bone producing the tension.
Again, boring from the 2014 position (drawing from 243 scientific references), it’s clear that resistance training for children and adolescents is safe provided they’re given proper instruction on technique and progression and are lifting under the supervision of an adult.
It’s also been shown to be beneficial for bone health, injury prevention and general strength.
It may also help to improve children’s perceived sports competence and just overall self-esteem.
Finally I think it’s an important point that encouraging kids to start weight training early may help them develop the relevant habits to continue weight training into adulthood.
I think this is one of those topics that’s just been more or less decided upon within the scientific community and there seems to be a lot of converging evidence and just unanimous agreement within the scientific literature on this one.
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What’s Next?
As you probably know or at some point you’ve been told that the best way to build muscle is by training each muscle group a different day of the week…
- Chest on Monday…
- Legs on Tuesday…
- Back on Wednesday…
- And so on. Or…
Maybe you’ve tried the double-up split where you train upper body one day, then lower body the next.
However, there’s something you need to know….
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