Designing a workout for a younger athlete may be complex at times.

Teens are still developing as humans physically and emotionally, and puberty is a game-changer. There are also limiting factors like time, equipment availability, and training history that need proper consideration.

Any good training program is designed with a primary goal in mind. Whether that be to develop the “X” attribute or prepare them for “Y,” there must be a reason for everything and a goal too.

Youth development is interesting because it’s a long-term investment. We’re training today to reap the rewards of training for tomorrow.

If a child wants to peak physically for sports in the future, this base is crucial.

Every great architect knows that a peak can only be as high as its base will allow.

How do you develop a strong base or foundation? Sports themselves provide much of this groundwork, providing the athlete with free-flowing, unscripted movement that can’t be replicated elsewhere.

That’s why young athletes need to participate in multiple sports, so they get exposed to several different movement patterns instead of becoming specialists so early.

Specialization should occur much farther down the road when we focus more on the peak of our athletic and sports development.

This is why training the youth is so important because while we can do so much good for this age, physically and as a major confidence booster, we can equally do a lot of damage from a long-term athletic development perspective if we expose them to advanced training methods or movements that they are not prepared for yet.

This would be like pulling all your money out of your investment before it reached its full potential, missing out on the rest of the return!

We don’t want to leave money on the table, and we don’t want to stunt physical development either.

The training program for our youth should focus on developing the entire body each session. No stone should be left unturned, and each movement category must be checked off.

Warm-Up:

It’s a necessary component of training, to begin with. This preparation should allow for free-flowing movements and athlete individual expression; this will be the least structured workout.

Take 5 to10 minutes to incorporate activities such as:

Games

Crawls

Skips, Hops, Sprints, and Bounds

The major movement categories that need to be addressed are broad and allow a coach to fill in the appropriate movement to fit each category.

Push

Pull

Squat

Hinge

Single Leg

Trunk

Carry

Once the movement categories are set, the workout structure can begin to take shape. Programs are subject to change and may need to be adjusted off of the athlete’s abilities, time, and workload of other activities such as practices, school, etc. There are many different ways to go about this portion of training, and each situation will differ based on the situation.

Sets of 5-10 repetitions for 3-4 sets are fundamental and great for youth athletes. In fact, when beginning to increase the total workload for athletes, instead of increasing reps, I’d recommend increasing the sets instead.

Timed sets are another option, often neglected. Instead of setting an exact amount of sets per exercise, set a time limit to hop between a superset of two movements, with rest included, for 5 minutes.

It’s better for group-based training and those on a time crunch.

Example Workout

Warmup (5-10 minutes)

1A) Squat Movement 3-5×5-10

• Rest 20 seconds between movements

1B) Pull Movement 3-5×5-10

• Rest 60 seconds between sets

2A) Hinge Movement 3-5×5-10

• Rest 20 seconds between movements

2B) Push Movement 3-5×5-10

• Rest 60 seconds between movements

3A) Single-Leg Movement 3-5×3-6 on each side.

• Rest 20 seconds between movements

3B) Trunk Movement 3-5×5-10

• Rest 60 seconds between sets

4) Carry Movement to finish 3-5x

• Rest 60 seconds between sets

Designing a workout session doesn’t have to be rocket science.

While the training itself should be fun and light-hearted, the athlete’s long-term development should be prioritized and taken very seriously.

What we do with our athletes today will impact them later down the road.

Read more:

• The Complete Athlete 1-Year Workout Plan: Strength Training
• How to Build a Customized Full-Body Workout Plan in Minutes