Looks like my son is going to take after his dad

Are those rubber coated??? Had a set of those back in my military days... loved them.

 

Monkey see, monkey do...

 

Yeah, I have 140 kg. of bumper plates and a competition level Olympic weightlifting bar, among many other toys in my garage/office.

 

Have you ever noticed that toddlers squat to pick things up. That it's only as we get to say 2 - 3 years old that we start to bend over to pick things up.
What a different world it would be if we didn't loose that strength and flexability, only to try and get it back again as teens / adults.

 

140kg???
I know your only as tall as my kitchen bench and all, but you also still weigh the same as me, so.......what do you use when doing back squats?
Surely your one rep max is more than that.

 

That is 140 kg. in bumper plates only. I have over 1,000 lbs. in iron plates.

 

Fair enough.
I like bumper plates to, but they sure aren't cheap, for what is simply moulded resin surrounding a steel plate.

 

some nice gear there..... personally I have my good old iron plates coated in a nice light powdery rust andstill love the "clang" they make as I heave and sweat and continue to attempt to "forge my body in the fire of my will" after all these years...

 

The bumpers are particularly good for Olympic weightlifting safely without destroying the lifting platform that I built (and without damaging the plates). The reality is that if you are performing Olympic lifts, you will miss lifts, and that means weights will be free falling from, at times, over your head (like when you miss a Jerk). With bumper plates and by 20 kg. bar, I can load the bar with more weight (160 kg. or ~352 lbs.) than I can clean, jerk, snatch, snatch-pull, or clean-pull. I deadlift more than that, so I use a combination of bumper plates and iron plates when deadlifting.

I use the iron plates primarily in the power rack (or when deadlifting) for things like squats, front squats, presses, bench presses, bent rows, or attached to a belt for pullups or rows.

 

wait till yur son gets a little older....like 2 years old.....if yu start wrestling with him....man they are so strong....and the wrestling and jiujitsu comes so naturally for them....

my son takes my daughters back and does the rear naked choke.....my daughter but me in an arm bar last month......
absolutely beautiful to watch

 

Yeah, diaper changes are already a challenge and have been for the last several weeks. He switches his hips like a champ to get to his knees, he already uses a baby version of the X-Guard on me, and I am pretty sure he tried to arm-drag me the other day.

 

my daughter grabbed a hold of my collar, put her feet in my neck and pushed and pulled....choked me out....she was like six months old


ama

 

What a cutie! When my youngest son was 6, he started with an obsession of getting 6-pack abs. No kidding, I'd catch him doing crunches and other types of workouts he learned in karate class to strengthen his core muscles. And he had a 6 pack! It was a first for me, to see a 6 pack on a kid. He doesn't have the abs he once had but still likes to work out with me.

 

My sons 13 now and getting increasingly obsessed with his physique.
We've been butting heads a bit to be truethful. He wants to start doing weights like me and I won't let him.
I'll work out and he watches like a hawk, but then I'll run him thru a few sets of things like pull ups, dips, air squats, broad jumps, bar roll outs, burpees, rope climbs, etc, etc....
Sometimes we'll have a few rolls on the mats I have, basic stuff from BJJ that I'm confident about and also confident about him not getting into to much trouble with.

Also have caught him nicking my recovery shakes, like he thinks they're some magic elixir that will just give him the perfect body.

I keep telling him that at his age he should focus on gymnastic type strength, all body weight.
Keep up his swimming and athletics, but don't think about weights until at least 15 - 16.

Unfortunetly his peer group are mostly footballers and all stand head and shoulders taller than him and are allready far more heavy set and muscled than him. I try to tell him that if you look at their dads you'll see why, as most of them are BIG guys, tall and heavy set type builds.


But what do I know, I'm just Dad.

 

There is no reason why you couldn't supervise weight training with him on lower weight pyramid sets, and only increase reps vs. weight... or if you increase weight be very slow about it.
I am suprised that if he is swimming (assuming competatively) that he isn't doing weight training?
It would simply give you another father/son relational opportunity. Just a thought.

 

My 4 year old goes for the choke EVERY time either of his older brothers leave their backs exposed... been good actually to reinforce a few things for my 9 and 7 year olds... on two hand + grab/squat/buck... with a very gentle roll of face toward opposite knee. Gentle being the key 'cause I don't want hip throws of my 4 year old.
More importantly, I am impressed how they automatically have controlled their response with minimum required force and speed.

 

I should have worded that better sorry. He wants to start body building for mass gains.
I'm maybe a little outdated here, but I've always believed that body building at to young an age can have adverse effects on growth.
He wants a six pack, pecks and 'guns'.....All of which I keep telling him he can get thru calisthenics type exercises.
You look at gymnasts in his age group and they have exactly the sort of physique he's after.
But from my advantage of years I know that the strength they have is far more practical than what he'll gain from curls and bench.
He just thinks that big equals strong.

We do work out, just I'll do my stuff and then I'll get him and his sister out there and put them thru their paces.
Just that for them I only have them do things that use bodyweight.
If I tried to do my thing at the same time it would just be impractical, all that changing around of weights every set.....

As for competitive swimming, no would be the short answer there.
If they were so good that they got a schoolarship to the A.I.S , then yes, I would think that that would be incorperated into daily training.
But living in a small country town, where the next closest olympic sized pool is over an hours drive away. No. We're luckey to even have an olympic sized pool, as almost all funding for sports goes to football and cricket, the two most popular played sports around. All coaching is volenteer work by parents.
I'm just stoked that I have two fit healthy kids that will get themselves up at 5am and get dressed and go down to the pools at 5:30am to train before school. And then will ride up to the oval after school on alternate days for athletics, no supervision needed.

My little winge was more about the stupidity of social peer pressure and media portayal of masculinity.
Because....he's fallen for it.
He thinks that if I would let him start body building that he would become a faster swimmer or runner, that his mates would stop teasing him for being 'skinny', that it would get him more attention from girls, etc, etc....
Trying to explain to him that strength isn't determined by size is falling on deaf ears.
That to win at swimming he needs power and endurance, not mass.....is falling on deaf ears.
And that girls will like you for all sorts of things, your success at school or sports, music...whatever, more than just your muscles!


I don't know....
Maybe I should just let him do as he wants......and be there to pick up the pieces later when he finally realises that it takes years of dedicated hard work to get the action movie star physique he thinks will solve all his problems.

Don't know

Teenagers!

 

I started lifting weights at 14. It never did me any harm.