I am 5 feet 0 inches and just completed 8th grade. I will begin football in the fall of freshman year. The problem is that I am probably not old enough to have the testosterone needed to gain muscle since I haven’t reached that stage of puberty yet.
My BMI is 17.5, so I am underweight. I am incredibly weak and am struggling to gain size and height. What can I do? What can I expect in the next two to three months?
Well, sounds like you’re about the same size as I was entering freshman year. If I were you I’d focus on speed, agility, and football skills (catching, tackling, reading a defense/offense). Lift weights too, but don’t worry as much about that until you begin hitting your growth spurt. If you can build up a solid athletic base and football IQ that will take you much further than toiling away in the weight room.
Exercise and eat like the rest of us. Lots of us were weak and small. You’ll be okay.
Pasta and potatoes, buddy. Not exclusively, but yeah. Carb it up. And do push-ups, pull-ups, squats and sprints. There are so many kids worried about lifting when they can’t do a proper push-up or pull-up.
Finally, what can you expect in the next 2-3 months? Probably not a lot. You are primed for more growth in these next few years than lots of us will see for the remainder of our lives, but 2-3 months at your age isn’t a lot of time to do anything but eat more food and get in better shape.
Are you having trouble with eating enough day to day?
I exercise a lot for football, and I have a hard time eating enough to offset calories burned.
For training this is a good start…
For diet just eat, eat and eat somemore.
To get up to say 130 have a large junk meal every 2-3 days, as dirty as possible. On normal days Get mom to cook you tons of lean beef. Eat unlimited eggs vegetables rice and pasta. Pint of whole milk every day.
For training as below no empty calries -always be sipping watered down gatorade/juice etc Perfect world get a karbolyn type product or Biotest Surge…
Good advice from everyone.
I was slightly bigger around this age Like 115-120. If it’s realistic for you, see if you can sit this season out and spend more time eating and training.
How old are you?
I’ll tell you same as everyone else - eat more.
Not too much if you still didn’t hit puberty and lack proper T levels, and avoid junk food (you could gain fat)
Do some sthrenght training. But work on agillity, speed and other stuff like that more. That will be more useful than your bench press max anyways.
This might sound ridiculous but training program for women might work for you if you are like 12 - 13yo and your testicles aren’t working yet.
And no. By program for women I don’t think on “booty programs” and shit like that.
Assuming its American Football, no amount of speed or agility will help a 90lb kid when he’s tackled by a 180-200lb dude. In a JV or Freshman football program, maybe 140-170, and thats still a big difference.
Toughness will be the major factor in your first year if they do put you on the field. But if I were your coach, I’d probably keep you on the bench for games. Still gotta be careful about how training/practice will go down.
You’re definitely off to a good start just by asking the community here. There’s no reason a 90lbs freshman kid shouldn’t eat Junk food. First off they’re a kid and should enjoy some junk food, secondly they’re 90lbs and are at no risk of getting fat. Even a 10lbs fat gain would be good for them.
In my gym, men and women do the same workouts/programming. It doesn’t matter. Now is a great time to build some good habits and milk some beginner gains. I recommend any Starting Strength, Stronglifts 5x5, 5/3/1 (where I started), or Texas Method.
Once the pre-season/season starts, lift with your team. If you’re allowed to keep up a program like this, do it. If not, do whatever your team does. THe only reason I suggested sitting this year out is because football is pretty cardio intensive. You’ll be out in the sun 2x a day in pre-season inside hot equipment running back and forth, and 1x a day in season, with games every week. This isn’t too conducive to growth at your stage. If you were like 120-140, this would work. But having no football background and being undersized puts you at a disadvantage in football, and the schedule of the football season will put you at a disadvantage for gaining weight.
Im sure we all have eating strategies that will help this kid. Mine is to buy a carton of eggs, boil them up and just keep them in the fridge. Every hour on the hour go and take one (or every period at school), start with 3/4 a day and build up. Thats a great way to get extra nutrients and eggs are amazing.
Dont be fussy eat meat and fruit would be mich better than junk eg mango bananas if you have.
Work up to like 200g of meat a day to start and with 4-6 eggs also thats a good addition. Throw in a can of tuna here n there or high protein yogurt and your good. Almost forgot, rice and noodles also, alot, for training energy.
As for training do like someone suggested, pullups pushups/dips squats and sprints, those are the money exercises. Chris colucci has a great article “getting a kid to lift” that has a BW routine to start.
Well you have to consider genetics. If parents are short, like 5’2 or 4’11 or something, then he may not grow very much more. If they are taller, he may have a chance height wise, if that makes sense.
If he’s short, he’s likely to grow more deeper in puberty. At this moment he’s best off eating a lot, training hard, and staying injury free.
I don’t think 90 lbs is his peak genetic potential by any means
I agree with everything except sitting out the season. I don’t think not playing football will make him better at football. He’s not likely to play anyway, but I think he’s best served to start trying to get reps with the team.
I suggest it because at 90lbs, it’s not safe to play a high impact contact sport with kids who are nearly double his size. Not getting hurt and spending time eating/training will do more good than sweating inside football gear a few hours a day and warming a bench the rest of the time.
I don’t disagree with your point, but he won’t be in games and at some point, assuming we are going to play sports, we have to trust the coaches to make safe decisions in practice (I recognize that’s a whole other conversation, which is why it’s an “if” in my assumption). I’d say the ideal scenario is a freshman team where he’s around other small kids, he learns game skills, and has an opportunity to prove himself to the team in the weight room and on the track.