Speed training for a young teenager

M

mrulon

Member
Hi Cathe,

I have a fourteen year old son, who is extremely muscular. I recently introduced him to weight training and have noticed that his hips are extremely tight, which seems to limit his ability to lift his knees completely while running.

Is there any types of specific exercises or stretching you could recommend for him.

Thank you in advance!

Mark
 
Hi I'm not Cathe, but you might want to try her StetchMax for your son. It's a very good full body stretch program and he could repeat the stretches he needs from it to stretch out his hips and hamstrings. A lot of young kids around that age, can buff up but their stretching is very limited, always make sure he warms up with at least 5 to 10 minutes of light/medium exercise before trying to stretch so he doesn't tear the lining on top of the muscles. One thing anyone can do, if they stretch without warming up.

Kit
 
Thanks for your input. He stretches all the time, but was just wondering about specific stretches for the hips. His legs are so thick that he almost seems to have a difficult time lifting his knees to their maximum height while running.
 
hmm I'm wondering if his quads are getting missed in his workouts, or if they are the ones that need to be stretched along with the hamstrings. Quads are the muscles on the top of leg. Quads are sometimes easy to miss while working out, unless doing any of Cathe's leg workouts, but depending on how much your son works out, the workouts may not be challenging enough to really work the quad muscles. But I've seen quite a few football players have weak quads, when they come to play college ball, and that's the first thing we work on if that's the case.

One way to test this, is to have him walk/jog in place and lift his knee up so that his leg forms a 90 degree angle between his thigh and calf, and then to continue this first slowly then warming up and trying to go faster. If the muscle feels tired after a few minutes, it generally an indication of weak quads, if it just feels tight he needs to really stretch that area.

Kit
 
No, he doesn't have weak quads. In fact, without any type of weight training, he did a 305 pound squat. I know that the squat is more a thigh exercise, however, you can't have weak quads and still be able to squat that much at his age.
 
Do you think he would be interested in any yoga? Last year my 14 ds and I were adding in Eoinn Finn's power yoga for happiness - the quickie segment after our w/o a few times a week and we both noticed an improvement. It is the pigeon pose I guess that really helps. There is also a segment completely devoted to hips. I have heard he has some free downloads too. I really need to start adding this back in again, as I have become tight.:-( Marnie
 
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