Teen Weight Training - There's No School Like Old School

Similarities Between Old-School Teen Weight Training Then and Now

Similarities between weight training modes used by boys seeking to morph themselves in 1965 and today.

Chicks dig me! Making gains and fired up for more: 15-year-old after one year of result-producing training.

Motivated Teens Make the Best Lifters

I weight train teenage boys on a regular and recurring basis. I like working with youngsters, assuming they are self-motivated. I sniff out and pass on father-motivated teens. I will not work with the unmotivated, regardless of age. I look for a certain type of teen, one totally dissatisfied with their current physical state. It has been my experience that those afflicted with this deep dissatisfaction make for hard and determined workers.

I expose teens to tried-and-proven Old School hardcore weight training methods. Real progress, adding muscle and strength, stripping off body fat, and attaining true fitness, regardless of age, requires backbreaking work combined with proven-effective, battle-tested systems. I can provide the battle-tested systems if they can provide the backbreaking work.

I was one of those boys that burned for transformation. In my day we scoured the muscle magazines for photographic inspiration and weight training information. Our information was extremely limited but extremely good. The muscle mags, Strength & Health, Muscle Builder, Muscular Development, All American Athlete and Iron Man, provided excellent information on a wide range of strength sports: Olympic weightlifting, bodybuilding, powerlifting, and training for sport. So much of that truly Old School information I first gleaned in the 1960s and 1970s has proven prophetic.

Old-School Muscle Magazines and the Firehose Problem

So many of the weight training methods I first learned, and used to transform myself, from John McCallum, Tommy Suggs, Bill Starr, Rick Wayne, Tommy Kono, Bill Pearl, Averill Taggert, John Grimek, et al., have stood the test of time and form the foundational principles I use today to train modern teens. Nowadays teens go online seeking weight training advice. This is akin to drinking from a firehose. Trying to find sound advice today is as likely as finding the golden needle in the giant haystack.

The Teen Weight Training Template

When motivated teens find me, I teach them highly specific techniques: full-range-of-motion squats, bench presses, deadlifts, overhead presses, and power cleans. I strength train them once or twice a week. We stress absolute strength and explosive strength. During the week they engage in intense sport, or practice sustained-strength cardio drills utilizing the “burst” approach, i.e., go all-out, recover, repeat for the duration of the training session.

The technical menu is not exotic. The execution is everything. A teenage lifter does not need novelty. He needs ownership: own the squat, own the bench press, own the deadlift, own the overhead press, own the power clean, own the food, own the sleep, own the logbook.

Motivation Requires Visible Results

There is a psychology behind motivating teens and keeping teens motivated: you need to obtain results for young boys and do so quickly. If they train hard, eat big enough, and rest big enough, weekly gains for diligent teens are obtained in measurable benchmarks. Each week power improves, explosiveness increases and locomotive-like endurance is built. If they follow Old School advice, and if the loading, food, sleep and recovery are appropriate, dramatic gains can occur.

Bodyweight Goals Need Adult Judgment

Bodyweight goals are established and set into periodized timeframes. Is the youngster overweight and seeking to lean out? Is the individual skinny, undersized and seeking to muscle up? For the former, each successive week the goal is a slight decrease in bodyweight. For the latter, a slight increase in bodyweight would be prescribed.

• An overweight 260-pound 17-year-old football tackle seeking to lean out might target a gradual reduction across a 12-week periodization cycle, assuming the goal is appropriate, supervised and not crash dieting.
• An underweight 6-foot-2, 150-pound basketball player seeking to muscle up might add bodyweight gradually across a 12-week cycle, understanding that the scale does not tell him how much of that weight is muscle.

Each successive week, predetermined, periodized goals are pursued in lifting, cardio and bodyweight. The proverbial elephant is consumed one bite at a time and eaten slowly. Each week the teen athlete becomes slightly stronger, slightly fitter, slightly leaner or slightly more muscular, depending on the mission. At the end of an unbroken 12-week cycle, the teen athlete is an enhanced, improved version of his previous self. And hungry for more.

The wonderful fact about teen boys that commit to our “holistic process,” though we would never describe it as such to them, is that gains can come at an astoundingly fast rate.

Puberty, Strength Training, and Fast Progress

If hardcore resistance weight training occurs as the teen is passing through puberty, results can skyrocket. Male puberty brings a dramatic rise in testosterone and other growth-related changes. Up until this biologic rite of passage, children are more similar than dissimilar. That all changes with the introduction of male testosterone into the boy body. If the young male lifter happens to be weight training hard and heavy when this hormonal environment comes online, dramatic increases in muscle size and strength can occur with mind-blowing rapidity.

The lifting triggers hypertrophy: more muscle built, more strength created. Tendons, ligaments, bone density, and connective tissues are gradually strengthened when the program is technically sound, progressively loaded, and properly supervised. The point is not that heavy lifting creates a magic testosterone faucet. The point is that puberty, hard training, food, sleep, and consistency can combine into a once-in-a-lifetime growth environment.

Food, Cardio, and Sleep Complete the Growth Cycle

The next phase of the “growth cycle” is for the young lifter to eat sufficient quality calories, creating the conditions for supercompensation. The growth cycle is completed when, after shattering muscles in a training session, after supercompensating with a massive intake of clean calories, the teen lifter sleeps like a hibernating bear. Physical exhaustion is a wonderful sleep inducer. The boy athlete wakes up bigger, stronger and more muscular than when he fell asleep the previous night. What a way to start a day. Chicks dig me!

There is a nutritional pitfall: if the teen athlete, crushing it in the weight room, sleeping deep and often, chooses to eat nothing but “bad” calories, he can accumulate an unacceptable amount of body fat. If the teen athlete lives on Pop-Tarts, fruit juice, donuts, pizza, ice cream, sodas, chips, and Big Macs, the scale might go up, but the added weight will not be the kind of weight we seek.

We all have foods we like that are beneficial and encouraged. “Heavy up” on the good foods to the point of satiation. After eating a half chicken, rice, a salad, and a giant glass of milk, the athlete has less room and desire for bad stuff. Cardio training is critical. Lifting heavy, stuffing your face on bad calories, being a slug, and avoiding cardio is an express train to obesity.

Muscle Memory and the Advantage of Starting Young

Another interesting aspect to hardcore teen weight training: muscle gains can echo for life. More accurately, muscle memory appears to exist, and having once built a level of muscle and strength, it can be easier to reattain that level than to build it for the first time.

If as a teen a boy builds a muscular 16-inch arm and 26-inch thighs at age 18, then quits training altogether, if he recommences at age 40, he may find that the old muscle comes back faster than it would for a man trying to build 16-inch arms for the first time. Having once pushed to that size, reattaining it is more doable. It is harder for someone at age 40 trying to construct 16-inch arms for the first time.

The bottom-line conclusion: in my experience, one of the best times for a motivated boy to commence serious, coached weight training is during the teen years as puberty unfolds. This can be an optimal time to harden and grow muscle, to morph from weak child into muscled-up teen. I underwent this optimized state and realized the best gains of my life.

I love showing these testosterone-charged young males how to avoid all the pitfalls and roadblocks I encountered. I show them the shortcuts and I hold them accountable. I teach them how to train, eat and rest as they pass through Nature’s once-in-a-lifetime anabolic growth phase. The diligent improve every week — for years. Oh, to be young again and to know what I know now. Youth is wasted on the young!

Safety Note for Teen Weight Training

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW first-person coaching perspective on motivated teen lifters. It is not individualized medical, pediatric, nutrition, rehabilitation, mental-health, or programming advice.

Teen resistance training can be productive when it is age-appropriate, technically taught, supervised, progressively loaded, and matched to the lifter’s maturity, sport, recovery, and motivation. Heavy squats, bench presses, deadlifts, overhead presses, power cleans, all-out sustained-strength drills, and bodyweight-change goals should not be copied casually.

Minors need parent or guardian awareness, proper instruction, safe equipment, warm-ups, recovery, hydration, enough sleep, healthy food, and adults willing to stop bad ideas. Bodyweight goals should support health and performance, not crash dieting, disordered eating, or scale obsession.

Stop or scale back for sharp pain, joint pain, dizziness, chest pain, unusual shortness of breath, numbness, repeated technical collapse, uncontrolled bar path, excessive fatigue, sleep disruption, disordered eating patterns, or any symptom that feels different from normal training effort.

Equipment Notes for Teen Weight Training

Old School does not mean unsafe or primitive. The original tools were simple: barbells, plates, dumbbells, benches, and machines when useful. The modern advantage is that the tools can be safer, better built, and better matched to the lifter.

For core barbell training, readers and facilities can compare Olympic weightlifting bars, weight benches, and a bar such as the IRON COMPANY Iron Cowboy Powerlifting Bar when the lifter, coach, room, and intended use justify that level of tool.

For assistance work and supervised strength-room options, compare dumbbells, IRON COMPANY rubber hex dumbbell sets, plate-loaded leverage gym equipment, and selectorized gym equipment. A bench station such as the Body-Solid SOFB250 flat Olympic bench press may fit some supervised rooms when the user group, spotter plan, load, and floor space are appropriate.

The equipment does not create the transformation. The motivated teen, the coach, the parent or guardian support, the logbook, the food, the sleep, the technique, and the willingness to do hard things create the transformation.

Related Old-School Weight Training Reading

For a companion Marty Gallagher case study on a young lifter and old-school training clarity, read Nothing New Under the Sun - Weight Training. For more on the old-school wisdom behind many of these lessons, read The Eternal Wisdom of John McCallum.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.