Healthy Exercise For 13-year-olds

It is a growing problem all across the world these days: head strong kids think they are going to buff up and become the hot shot in their middles school. What actually ends up happening is they stunt their growth and they look like mean, buff leprechauns by the time they are in high school.

Don't be foolish, the reason kids are not supposed to work with weights is because when you work through isolation exercises (like with weights) you are going to cause muscle atrophy. If you are thirteen you probably have no idea what that means.

Atrophy is where your muscles stop growing; it will put too much strain on specific areas of your body and shock the nerves. Isolation exercise like that are not to be used until you have fully matured, so if you are a late bloomer don't take weight training in high school either.

So what you want to do is compound exercises and aerobic exercises. Workout your entire body through bodyweight exercises.

These are going to build muscle, but at the same time you are going to be strengthening the core muscles through your body as well. You see you have to have even distribution of strain on all muscles if you want natural growth.

So that is why you will need to use your own body as a gym. Doing pushups and sit ups and pull ups are going to be perfect for you younger folks.

Do this routine: jump squats, push-ups, pull ups, walking lunges, dips and finally end with inverted pull ups. This is an exercise that specifically targets your arms and legs.

As a consequence of it being a routine made completely of body weight exercises you are also going to notice a real tightening in the stomach and abdomen. When we exercise with body weight, we have to maintain balance throughout our core the whole time.

This is going to tighten and strengthen our stomach, as well as create some hard definition in our abdomen. Working your abdomen, isn't really as much a necessity as people make it out to be.

If you are playing football, it would be good to have a strong core, but you can get that through all the exercises I just mentioned. And by doing excessive abdominal exercise you can actually create a muscular pop-belly.

This explains those pop-bellies that have huge six packs, like some sort of ninja-turtle or something. In essence don't touch the weights until you are grown into your body.

Lifting weights and gym exercises are not going to make you grow any faster, but they will cause you to stunt your growth. So be smart and exercise with body weight routines.

Destry Masterson is a health, fitness and nutrition expert. She has written articles about diet and exercise and recommends http://www.treadmillreviews.com for information about treadmills. Contact Info: Destry Masterson - MyOnlineArticleWriting@gmail.com - Twitter: @DestryMasterson