I remember when I was a youngster and first developed an interest in lifting weights. In fact, at first, I didn’t follow through with it. I was spoon fed horror stories about people wearing their bones away, having heart attacks, and, stunted growth in youngsters. In this article, I will dispel one of the greatest myths of bodybuilding: that it stunts growth in youngsters.
Let me first say, I would recommend that the very young don’t lift weights. I think a suitable age is around 15, when a person is reaching maturity. By this point, the person’s structure ought to be sound enough to cope with the rigors of bodybuilding.
But, I don’t truly believe that should a person lift any earlier than that, their growth will be stunted. Muscles are soft fibres… and, saying they have the capabilities to stunt growth is like saying wearing socks will cause your feet to stop growing. Nonsense.
And, even if muscles did have such growth-stunting capabilities, you’d have to have one hell of an amount of muscle to stunt your growth.
Let’s think about this for a second. Arnold Schwarzenegger started bodybuilding at a very young age, and, he still reached a height of over 6ft. And have you seen photographs of Arnold when he was younger? The guy was huge.
Arnold isn’t the only example, Shaquille O’Neal also began lifting at an early age, and, they don’t come much bigger than that guy.
So, if you didn’t get the conclusion of this article, it’s an emphatic no… weight training in those still growing will not stunt growth, it is simply a myth.