Jump landing & resilience

Is Strength Training Safe for a 13-Year-Old?

This is the question parents ask most, usually in a lowered voice, as if it might be a silly one.

It is not. It is the right question. And it has an answer that has been sitting in the research for a long time.

What the position statements say

Two bodies have reviewed this properly: the National Strength and Conditioning Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Both reached the same conclusion. Appropriately designed, supervised strength training has no adverse effect on growth, on growth plates, or on final height in young athletes.

The AAP goes further and notes that childhood and adolescence may be a particularly good window for bone to respond to loading. Both statements are linked at the bottom of this page. Read them yourself — they are written plainly.

Where the myth came from

The concern was never invented from nothing. Growth cartilage sits at the ends of long bones, at joint surfaces, and where big tendons attach. It is real, and it can be injured.

But the injuries that show up in the record come overwhelmingly from unsupervised maximal lifting, poor technique, and sudden jumps in load — not from coached, progressive training.

The word doing the work in every position statement is supervised.

The risk running the other way

Here is what a volleyball season actually asks of a young athlete: hundreds of jumps a week, every one of them landed.

An athlete with no strength base absorbs those forces with joints and connective tissue instead of muscle. That is the exposure worth worrying about — and it is the one nobody calls a risk, because it looks like normal practice.

The question is not whether to load a young athlete. Volleyball already does that. The question is whether she is prepared for it.

What good looks like

Coached. Progressive. Boring, in the best sense.

Technique before load. Load added in small steps she can absorb. Sessions that leave her able to train tomorrow.

If a programme cannot tell you what it measured before it started, it is not a programme.

The framework worth keeping

Strength is the tissue’s insurance policy. Volleyball collects the premium whether or not she has bought the policy.

This article supports our deeper guide: Jump landing & resilience.