Healthy Exercise Routines for Teens
As worldwide obesity rates continue to rise, teaching children about proper exercise and nutrition will become more and more crucial. Teenagers are especially primed to receive optimal benefits from structured exercise routines, as their increased hormone levels and fast metabolisms make progress relatively easy to accomplish. If you have been searching around for an exercise plan for teens, look no further.
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Consider Weightlifting
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Resistance training for teens is a perfectly acceptable way for teens to add lean mass while speeding up their metabolism and losing fat. For optimal results, teens should lift weight at least three or four days a week, with no more than two consecutive days of lifting in a row. This will ensure that the body has optimal time to recover between sessions.
Resistance Training Disclaimers
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Teens weightlifting (and adults as well) should always strive to first learn proper technique for each exercise to minimize the risk of injuries. Teens especially should refrain from attempting maximal lifts (anything less than three reps per set), as their growing bodies should not be placed under undue strain. Keep teens training in the range of five, eight, or 10 (or more) reps per set to avoid overloading them.
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Scheduling a Plan
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For beginners, three days a week of total body training is sufficient to stimulate weight loss and muscle gain without excessive risk. Perform each lift for either five sets of five reps, three sets of eight reps, or three sets of 0 reps, varying things up from session to session to keep the body guessing. Aim to progress from week to week by gradually adding more weight to the bar, or performing more reps with your current weight.
Exercise Selection
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For each session, choose four to six compound movements like overhead pressing, bench pressing, pull-ups, chin-ups, dips, rows, squats and dead lifts. Work the entire body with every session--always include at least one pressing (bench, overhead and dips), pulling (rows and chin-ups), and leg movement (squats, dead lifts and lunges). Sticking to mainly compound movements will increase metabolism to a greater degree than isolation exercises like curls, providing more weight control benefits to teens.
Add in Cardio
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While teens normally have lightning fast metabolisms, you might want to add in some additional endurance work to increase cardiovascular health as well. Two to three weekly sessions of 30 to 45 minutes at a slow to moderate pace should be sufficient to provide an additional fat loss boost without compromising the resistance training sessions. Stick to this plan for two or three months and you will be impressed by your teens' progress.
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