אח שלי הקטן רוצה להתחיל להתאמן.. הוא עוד חודש יהיה בן 13
כמובן איזה שינויים צריך לעשות בתכנית כדי שהיא תתאים לו? לעלות את המשקלים באחוזים יותר קטנים
או שבכלל עדיף שייתחיל עם קרוספיט או משהו בסגנון
הוא שוקל בערך 40 קילו על מטר 60
Rip: By young, I assume you mean prepubescent. I have always just taught them the lifts, yelled at them about absolutely correct form all the time, and let them lift as much as they can for sets of 5. They go up as they are able, with very small jumps and no more than 3 workouts per week. They are not strong enough to lift enough weight to get injured. It is virtually impossible to get hurt with absolutely correct form anyway, and correct form precludes any use of more weight than can be safely handled. They are also encouraged to eat right, eat a lot, and sleep.
Glenn: Mark deals with a lot of kids in the 12 to 14 age group. The way he does it is absolutely right. By definition, if they are doing a certain weight or exercise while following his program, they are strong enough to do it safely. In my opinion, there simply is not ANY better way to handle this age group. I often work with even younger kids, right down to the 7-8 year old age group. It’s necessary, if you want to develop the very best weightlifters (the sport, not the activity) to start young. With this age group you have to pay attention to the mental side of things, the attention span. So I do more variety with these kids, and don’t have quite the set in stone program for them that either Mark or I use for older kids. More “fun” type of activities so that they are doing different types of things every week and don’t get bored.
Matt: Mark, in your book, Starting Strength, you go in depth about how to coach absolute beginners. However, one thing we didn’t cover in last month’s interview is how specifically you set up their programming. I noticed from reading the book that you do just a handful of core exercises, usually for 3 sets of 5 reps and utilize progressive overload until they stall. Could you go in a bit more depth about that programming?
Rip: It’s really not much more complicated than that. If it was, it wouldn’t be useful. We teach correct form on the lifts, determine how much weight can be used for sets of 5, and then add a little to each exercise every workout, the amount depending on the exercise, until that simple linear progress stops. The more careful the trainee is about picking the increase, about not getting greedy, the longer the progress can be maintained. All assistance exercises are done after the core lifts, if at all, and for sets of 10. We do some glute/ham work and some reverse hypers, and a few arms. Chins I consider to be a semi-core lift, and we do those to failure for 3 sets until failure exceeds 12 reps, at which time we add weight to get the reps back down in the strength-training range.