If you want to get your child involved in healthy exercise, one good way is with strength training. This is one good way for children to build healthy muscles.

If a weightlifting program is properly designed, you can help children improve endurance, increase fitness and improve sports performance. It can also help prevent injuries and help them recover faster from sports related injuries. When children strength train, they use weight resistance, either with machines, rubber bands, free weights or body weight to increase muscle strength. Because of the resistance utilized, the muscles have to work harder, which makes them stronger and more efficient.

Done properly, when children weight lift, they can also strengthen ligaments and tendons, and increase bone density. Indeed, researchers have found that most bone density is established in the childhood years between 9 and 18. After 30 years, bone is continually lost unless weight training is continued, which can eventually lead to osteoporosis if not forestalled with diet and exercise. The more bone is established in the early years, the less likely osteoporosis will be later on.

When children weightlift, they can also feel better about themselves as they continue to get stronger.

With children, the goal is not to bulk up with weightlifting, but it is used to increase muscle strength for better performance and to protect muscles and tendons as well as bones during activities against injury. Young children should never engage in actual weightlifting or bodybuilding for those purposes. Indeed, this type of activity can damage growth plates, which can affect growth and cause infection.

When children weight lift, they should be old enough to have participated in organized competitive sports. The program they utilize should teach proper technique and integrate neuro-proprioceptive training. This in turn should improve sports performance. Someone specially trained in working with children and weight training should also be available so that the child is sure to be safe and uses the equipment properly.

If children are at least six years old, they can be involved in strength training activities such as situps and push-ups, where they can be taught to do the exercises properly and safely. These exercises used only body weight and can help them develop ordination, balance, physical control and kinesthetic awareness.

If children are begun on these exercises early in life, they will also develop good fitness habits that can last their entire lives. A routine that uses proper weightlifting, including use of body weight, should encourage light weights and more repetitions. In general, children should only lift weights that are considered "light" for them, up to 16 repetitions for two sets. The goal is to develop strength without bulking up.

Done properly, muscles will respond to lifting weights by developing endurance and strength. Shorter repetitions with greater weights means muscles will bulk up, which is appropriate for adults but not for children. Using heavy weights with children will damage growth plates and should not be done with people who have not fully finished growing.

Children can lift weights if done properly. With correct technique, utilizing light weights with lots of repetition, and lifting their own body weight to use exercises such as situps and push-ups, children can "lift weights" and benefit from physical exercise, increased bone density and increased strength and endurance.

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