Every now & again, we revisit one of the listener questions we’ve answered in a previous episode. It’s been edited for clarity & brevity.
PATRICK: This question is from Ricky.
He says, "My 10-year-old son is very active in sports like soccer and flag football. I heard in one episode that Bode was doing deadlifts. At what age should I start introducing weights to my son? I'm active in CrossFit and played college football. I want to make sure I don't introduce weights too early."
BEN: You can't introduce them too early because they're already lifting. They pick up their backpack, they help you carry groceries —they're already lifting. What we're really talking about is lifting heavy loads.
It's like asking, "When should I start my kids skiing?"
You can start them young. These are normal, functional, daily movements that we do all the time. We want them to develop strong movement patterns. So, the first answer is: now or even younger.
The key is teaching them proper movements, not trying to get as strong as possible. Look at the Chinese weightlifting team — they do such a great job of this. They put so much emphasis on technique at a young age that by the time athletes reach their late teens, 17, 18, 19, they barely need to work on technique anymore. They can focus on strength because they move so well.
Think about swimming. If you perfect the technique when a kid is 4 to 12 years old — those eight years focused purely on technique, technique, technique. It's not about how fast they go down the pool; it's about whether they can swim with incredible proficiency and technique.
Then, from 12 to 17, you build fitness and really push it. That's exactly my mentality toward weightlifting — kids should not be lifting heavy.
They don't need to lift heavy and they certainly shouldn't lift heavy and fast.
Movements should be controlled and look really good.
I learned this from Coach B, Coach Burgener, who's sent his kids and many others to the Olympics.
The idea when he was working with his kids in Olympic lifting was simple: you're not allowed to add weight unless the previous rep looked perfect.
If that rep looked perfect — meaning Coach B, who sends people to the Olympics and knows Olympic lifting, says, "I don't know what else I would fix on that" — then the kid can add five pounds on each side.
But until that rep looks perfect, we're not going to add weight.
We take those types of small jumps.
To me, that's a very methodical approach. You start them off with a broomstick and teach them how to deadlift, bench press, and front and back squat with just that.
When the technique looks perfect — to the point where you can't figure out how to make it better — then it's time to increase intensity.
But before that, it's all about technique.
We have to master technique first.
Technique and intensity work against each other, and we want to focus on technique as long as possible.
That's when I would introduce weights, and that's what we've done with Bode and in our kids' program. We keep the form looking really good. Maybe next week, add 5 pounds. If it doesn't look quite right, we stay where we are.
We're not taking 30-pound jumps where form gets terrible.
We're taking what was really dialed in, adding five pounds, and if we see even a small deviation, we stay there.
This is our threshold.
We're building this huge foundation so that when they get older, they can make gains much faster.