FAQs
FAQs are directly related to our Youth Development Program. Click on each question to be taken to the respective section.
- Is my child too young to lift weights? Won’t it stunt their growth?
No. Supervised resistance training does not damage growth plates or stunt growth. The evidence on this has been settled for over two decades, with position statements from the Australian Strength and Conditioning Association (ASCA), National Strength and Conditioning Association (American, NSCA), the American Academy of Paediatrics, United Kingdom Strength and Conditioning Association (UKSCA), and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) all supporting youth strength training as safe and beneficial when properly coached.
What compromises young athletes is:
- Unmanaged Overtraining
- Chronic Energy Deficiency and
- Early Sport Specialisation
Our programming draws from multiple research frameworks in youth athletic development, applied through what we’ve built up over multiple decades of coaching junior athletes, with appropriate sequencing to biological maturation (puberty) rather than just chronological age.
LTAD is a multi-year development approach to building a juniors complete physical attributes, sequenced to match how the body and nervous system are developing during pre, circa and post adolescence, including:
- Movement competency
- Physical literacy
- Strength
- Power
- Resilience
- Jumping Coordination
- Running Mechanics
A typical gym sells access, a kid’s fitness class sells activity.
We work on a developmental pathway. Your child enters at their current movement and training age, progresses through stages gated by competency, age and biosocial factors (Origin, Mold, Forge, Surge & Sharpen), and is re-tested each quarter so the program adapts to the athlete in front of us.
3. How do you decide when my child is ready to progress to the next exercise or load?
Progression is gated by movement quality first and foremost, not just by how many weeks have passed. Every movement at Athlete Origin sits inside a learning “thread”, for example, the mastery of a Squat thread runs from a body-weight squat through to advanced barbell variations utilising phases of:
- Foundation
- Load
- Vary
- Build
- Master
4. Will doing Youth Development compromise my child’s in-season performance?
No.
But what their training looks like in-season depends entirely on which developmental group they sit in. Our juniors move through five groups, and the need for seasonal adjustment grows as they get older:
Origin (10 – 12 yrs) – Focus is on foundational movement skills. Juniors are continuously exploring movements from both a learning and competency standpoint. Training looks very different to a late-stage teenager’s, and there’s no need for an in-season vs off-season volume change because their developmental priorities sit somewhere different entirely.
Mold (12 – 13 yrs) – A continuation of Origin with a heavier focus on strength, but on bodies that still bounce back quickly thanks to a strong aerobic dominant physiology. No real seasonal volume shift required here either.
Forge (13 – 15 yrs) – Juniors start tolerating some hypertrophy work (muscle growth), and off-season volume can be lifted. In-season programming has subtle adjustments, but it doesn’t yet require the big seasonal swings older athletes need.
Surge (15 – 17 yrs) – Competition starts to carry real weight, and performing on the weekend becomes a priority. Volume and training blocks now take a clear seasonal shape.
Sharpen (18+ yrs) – Performance focused. In-season programming shifts volume and intensity meaningfully, with explicit game-day readiness considerations layered in.
The short version: the older the more competitive and physiologically developed your child is, the more deliberately their week is shaped around their fixture. Youth development done in this framework is built to support the season (and future ones), not compete with it.
5. Will my child get bulkier from training here?
It depends largely on whether your child has hit puberty (late stage peak growth, or peak weight velocity (Girls ~14+.Boys ~16+). The answer splits naturally into two groups.
Pre-Puberty (roughly girls up to ~11, boys up to ~13) -without the hormonal up regulation that comes from puberty, meaningful lean muscle mass is genuinely difficult to build, regardless of how much your child lifts (frequency or time). The benefits at this age sit elsewhere: nervous system adaptation (improved motor control, and contraction rates), mobility, proprioception (their awareness of their own bodies space), and the confidence that comes from identifying their own strength and power. No mini Hercules emerges from this demographic.
Puberty Onset – Hormones now allow the body to build muscle (hypertrophy), so “bulky” becomes a fair question. Worth separating into two parts:
Lean muscle – The concern is usually less about muscle itself and more about its perceived side effects (stiffness, loss of power to weight, speed). A well rounded program addresses stiffness directly, and resistance training is actually what protects power to weight when rapid growth and weight gain arrive, and what guards against overuse injuries by strengthening soft tissue and progressively loading bone.
Fat mass- Resistance training increases appetite (aerobic work suppresses it), so a child training hard will genuinely want to eat more. That’s useful and required for fuelling adaption. With the fluctuations in hormonal changes, there can be periods of fuel reserves (fat), to be increased, so during your child’s natural development they will fluctuate as their body is going through growth.
We only program for hypertrophy when appropriate for each individual, as it plays a critical role for strength development, and the cascading effects for power and speed. Increasing lean muscle mass is only of benefit unless your junior wants to be a coxswain in rowing.
For a fuller version this, see our blog page “Will your child get too bulky?”
6. Won’t lifting weights make my child slower?
The opposite. Decades of research on youth strength training and our own testing data on hundreds of juniors, who that well programmed youth development makes juniors faster, not slower. Sprint speed, change of direction, and reactive jumping all improve when force production, rate of force development, and elastic qualities are trained. “Slow Lifters” are a product of programming done for the sole purpose of getting an individual stronger (heavy slow grinds with no power or speed work); not lifting itself. Our sessions deliberately include jumps, sprints, throws and reactive work alongside strength. Ultimately out goal is a junior who can express the strength they build, not just one who can lift it.
7. Will my child get hurt?
Supervised resistance training has consistently shown lower injury rates than the sports children are already competing in. A coach is present for every working set, progressions are conservative and appropriate for each individual, and we test movement competency prior to adding any load. Training carries some inherent risk, the same as any physical activity, but we’d rather your child learn to move under load in a coached environment than the first time they need to in their sport.
8. What does a typical session look like, and how often should my child come?
Sessions run ~70 minutes for teenage groups and 60 minutes for our junior groups (10 – 12 yrs): a structured progressive warm-up that doubles as movement preparation, the main strength and power work, then accessory and resilience work. Two sessions per week is the baseline that produces meaningful change; three sessions per week is the sweet spot for juniors serious about a sport. Less than twice a week is fine as a complement but generally won’t drive testing improvements.
9. How will I know if my child is making progress?
We run a testing week approximately every quarter. Because the full testing battery is collected across two quarters, we send a full written report twice a year, once the complete dataset is in. Each report covers where your child sits relative toothier age-group cohort, how each metric has changed since the previous full test, and where they sit against published normative tiers (development /norm/ excellent / freak). The goal is for you to have a clear, evidence-based picture of your child’s development – not a feel-good update.
10. What do the testing numbers actually mean?
The headline tests we use, in plain English:
- Squat Jump & Counter Movement Jump measure lower body power
- Broad Jump measure horizontal power
- Hop 2. Stick (left and right) measures single leg power production, coordination, control and the allowance to check left v right imbalances
- Isometric Mid-Thigh Pull (IMTP) measures peak force production.
- Pull Up Reps measures upper body relative strength.
In addition to numerous coordination, stability and balance assessments which allow us to quantify underlying physical attributes which are reflected in every movement your junior is trying to train and master.
Every result is interpreted the context of your Childs age, training, history and lastly sport.
11. What happens during a growth spurt? Will my child get weaker?
Sometimes, yes. However that’s expected. Rapid growth changes lever lengths, body weight, and proprioception faster than what the junior can typically accommodate to. It’s commonly referred to as “adolescent awkwardness”, and despite what you’re seeing in front of your eyes as a junior who looks completely uncoordinated, slow and clumsy, they are more often than not still objectively performing the same, but now in a larger, non-effective/efficient body, looks to be “unathletic”. They’re just finding movement compromises to still achieve the same outcome whilst they grow into their “new body”. A plateau or small dip in jump and relative-strength metrics during peak growth is normal, not a regression in capability. We flag growth periods in our reports and adjust programming to prioritise movement quality and resilience while the body is changing.