Strength training with sense in youth football: what, how much and at what age

We take apart the myths (it does not stunt growth), what the evidence says, how to adjust for maturation and age, exercises with little equipment, dosage, jumps and landings, the Nordic exercise, how to fit it into the week and a 4-week block by age group with a checklist.

Linkalde · 2026-10-31

Few phrases raise as many doubts in a youth changing room as this one: “at this age they can't lift weights, it stunts their growth”. And few have so little backing. What does cause harm, and there are documented cases, is training strength without technique, without supervision or with maximal loads. Between one and the other there is a huge middle ground: bodyweight squats, lunges, planks, well-landed jumps. It is what any youth coach can fit into 15 or 20 minutes twice a week.

This article gathers what the international reviews and consensus statements on strength in young people say and turns it into practice: what to do at each age, at what dose, how to fit it into a normal club week and which mistakes to avoid. Where the evidence runs out, we say so and mark the guideline as “our own judgment”.

The myths, one by one

“Strength training stunts growth”

It is the most widespread one. The 2014 international consensus on strength training in young people (Lloyd and colleagues, adapted from the official position of the British strength and conditioning association and endorsed by sports medicine and paediatric organisations) states that the fear of damaging growth plates is not supported by scientific reports or clinical observation. On the contrary: mechanical stress on those cartilages may be beneficial for bone formation. A paediatric review in Spanish from the Children and Youth Sports Medicine Committee of the Argentine Society of Paediatrics (2018) reaches the same conclusion: there is no evidence that strength training reduces final height.

Where the myth comes from: that same review recalls that in the 1970s and 1980s growth plate injuries linked to strength training were described, and that most were due to poor lifting technique, maximal loads or lack of qualified supervision. It was not the exercise, it was how it was done.

“Children should not lift weights”

It depends on what you mean by “lifting weights”. The 2014 consensus indicates that children as young as 5 or 6 improve their muscular fitness with basic strength exercises, and that chronological age matters less than emotional maturity (being able to follow instructions) and a competent level of balance and postural control. The Argentine review places a reasonable start when postural control is acquired, around 7 or 8 years old. For a youth team that means bodyweight, pushing and jumping games, and elastic bands. Not loaded barbells.

“It is dangerous”

The same consensus reports that about 77% of acute injuries related to strength training in young people and adults are accidental, and that most are preventable with adequate supervision, progression based on technical competence and a safe environment. The Argentine review adds that the risks are no greater than in any other sporting activity if the guidelines are followed, and that they soar when qualified supervision is missing, the equipment is unsuitable or rest periods are not respected.

There is another fact that often surprises people. A jump and its landing, something that happens dozens of times in any match or free play, generates ground reaction forces of about 5 to 7 times body weight, more than those of strength training itself. A child who has never done strength work or learned to land faces those loads anyway, with less preparation.

“It is useless until puberty”

It is useful, and it may be more so. In the meta-analysis by Behringer and colleagues (2011), with medium effects on jumping, running and throwing, the youngest participants gained more motor performance than the older ones. The probable reason is that in children the improvement comes mainly from coordination and the nervous system, not from muscle. That is why strength work with young children looks more like a good coordination circuit and play than like a gym.

“Girls don't need it”

Quite the opposite. The 2014 consensus cites a longitudinal study in which girls who did no strength training during their maturation developed injury risk factors, such as a greater knee valgus moment on landing, while those who did showed safer mechanics and more strength in the posterior chain. And the meta-analysis by Petushek and colleagues (2019) on anterior cruciate ligament prevention in young girls found the greatest effect in the middle and high school stages. We will come back to this further down.

What the evidence says (and what it does not)

For football, the most specific review is that of Oliver and colleagues (2024): 34 controlled studies with 1,396 footballers up to 18 years old at a high level. Strength training, plyometric training and the combination of both improved jumping, horizontal power, acceleration and change of direction with moderate effects, and sprinting with small effects. To gain leg strength, strength and combined training worked better than jumps alone. 82% of the studies used two sessions a week and 79% lasted 12 weeks or less. With two weekly sessions and about three months there are already measurable improvements.

The review by Lesinski and colleagues (2016), with 43 studies in young athletes aged 6 to 18, also found moderate effects on strength and jumping and small ones on sprinting, agility and sport-specific performance. Its largest strength effects appeared with programmes of more than 23 weeks, 5 sets of 6 to 8 repetitions at 80-89% of one-repetition maximum and 3 to 4 minutes of rest. Be careful not to read it as a recipe for your U10s: it is a dose derived from averages of studies with athletes, not a starting guideline. The 2014 consensus reserves those ranges (fewer than 6 repetitions, over 85%) for periodised phases in young people with experience and proven technique.

And the improvement is not limited to performance. In injury prevention, programmes that include strength have given some of the clearest results we have in football:

Each measure is interpreted differently: OR is an odds ratio, RR a relative risk and IRR an incidence rate ratio. That is why we do not put them in one chart or convert them into percentages. What they all say, except the original FIFA 11, is that programmes with strength reduce injuries.

Honest limits. Most studies with young footballers are short (12 weeks or less), with few players and almost always boys: the Oliver review includes only males and acknowledges that maturity and training history were recorded inconsistently, so it could not analyse their effect. The cruciate meta-analysis includes only girls and has average methodological quality (5.45 out of 10 on the PEDro scale). And the hamstring effect comes from multicomponent programmes, where the contribution of the Nordic exercise cannot be isolated. None of this invalidates the message, but it explains why the doses in this article are cautious and why so many guidelines are our own judgment.

Maturation matters more than the birth year

Two players born in the same year can be several years apart in biological development. The 2014 consensus speaks of up to 4 or 5 years of difference between children of the same chronological age and concludes that the age on the ID is a poor indicator of maturational status. It defines childhood as up to 11 years in girls and 13 in boys, and adolescence as 12 to 18 in girls and 14 to 18 in boys, with a wide margin of individual variation. The article on growth and maturation has the details of the stages.

This matters for two practical reasons. The first is that the growth spurt is a delicate moment: in a study of 76 academy footballers followed over two seasons, the incidence of non-contact and overuse injuries was 24.5 per 1,000 hours around peak height velocity, compared with 11.5 before it (relative risk of 2.15; Johnson and colleagues, 2020). Whoever is in the middle of a growth spurt needs less volume, more technique and more recovery, not more load. The second is that training age (how long you have been doing this) counts as much as birth-year age: a 15-year-old who has never done strength work starts as a beginner, and a technically solid 10-year-old does not have to stay at the most basic level, say the consensus authors.

How to know without medical tests (our own judgment): measure your players' height every three months, with the same tape and on the same wall. Anyone who gains several centimetres in a short time is in the alert zone, and may complain of knees or heels. Lower their volume, not their content, and do not compare them with the teammate who has already stabilised.

Motor skills first, then load

Long-term athletic development models (Lloyd and colleagues, 2015) propose integrating talent, psychosocial development and physical development throughout maturation. In practice: during childhood, the goal is for the child to master jumping, landing, braking, turning, pushing, climbing and keeping balance. The 2014 consensus points out that this is a stage in which neuromuscular coordination is especially malleable. External load comes when those patterns are solid, not before.

On “windows of opportunity”. It is common to see charts saying that strength is trained “only” at one age and speed at another. The studies we have reviewed show improvements at all ages they include, from 5 or 6 years old to adolescence, and do not allow us to claim that there is an age after which training something is no longer worthwhile. Nor are they designed to compare windows. Use them as a guide to what to prioritise, not as a rule that expires at 13.

What to do at each age

There is no validated protocol for each youth football category. What follows combines the guidelines of the 2014 consensus and of the Argentine Society of Paediatrics review with our own judgment as pitch-side coaches. Think of the dose column as a starting point, not a fixed table.

Two clarifications. The first: if a 14-year-old arrives with no experience, he starts where the U10 starts, even if it lasts only a few weeks. The second: for a beginner, the 2014 consensus recommends starting with 1 or 2 sets and low intensity (up to 60% of one-repetition maximum, which in practice means “comfortable effort”), moving on to 2 to 4 sets of 6 to 12 repetitions at 80% at most, and raising the load only when technique improves. With new multi-joint exercises, such as the squat, the consensus proposes few repetitions (1 to 3) with correction after each one, because many repetitions in a row can harm motor learning.

The basic patterns, with little or no equipment

You do not need a gym. With sticks, low hurdles, bands, a medicine ball and a wall you cover all the patterns that matter. This table gives three levels for each one: move on to the next only when the previous one comes out clean, without hurry, and pay more attention to what you see than to what you are told.

Tempo: controlled movements while learning, and once technique is good, the intention to move fast in the upward phase (the 2014 consensus insists on that intention for transfer to sport), always without losing form. Rest: around 1 minute between sets is usually enough with children, according to the consensus, which raises it to 2 or 3 minutes if the exercise demands a lot of technique or power.

Jumps and landings: the most neglected part

In football you jump and land all the time: headers, duels, braking, turns. A landing with the knees inward, a rigid trunk and straight legs is what the literature associates with a higher risk of cruciate ligament injury in girls. And it works the other way round: the Petushek meta-analysis found that programmes with more landing stabilisation and leg strength exercises (Nordic, lunges, heel raises) were the most protective. That is why landing is taught before the high jump.

• First learn to drop: a small vertical jump and landing on two feet, knees bent, hips back, 2-second pause. If it sounds like a stomp, it is not right.
• Knees always in line with the feet. If they cave in on landing, go back to the previous level.
• Then, drops from a box or low step (20 to 30 cm is a reference of our own), and landings with a 90-degree turn.
• Later, single-leg landing with a 2-second balance, jumps over low hurdles and short multi-jumps with rebound.
• Load goes up in difficulty (height, one leg, rebound), not in number of repetitions.

And the volume? The meta-analysis by Chen and colleagues (2023), with 38 studies and 3,347 adolescents aged 10 to 19, improved the countermovement jump by 2.6 cm on average. Most programmes lasted 6 to 10 weeks, with two sessions of 20 to 40 minutes. They classified the programmes by total ground contacts: fewer than 900 in the whole programme, 900 to 1,400 and more than 1,400, and all three groups improved. The authors themselves acknowledge that there is not enough evidence to set an ideal number. With an eight-week programme and two sessions, 50 contacts per session add up to 800 and fall in the low range.

Our starting rule (our own judgment, cautious and not taken from a study): 20 to 30 contacts per session at U8 to U9, 30 to 40 at U10 to U11, 40 to 60 at U12 to U13, 60 to 80 at U14 to U15 and 80 to 100 at U16 to U18. Count each landing as one contact. Raise quality first and only then the number. And do not chain days of intense jumping.

Hamstrings and the Nordic exercise in youth ages

This is what is known about the Nordic exercise. The review by van Dyk and colleagues (2019), with 15 studies and 8,459 athletes, found that programmes that include it almost halved hamstring injuries (relative risk of 0.49; with randomised trials only, 0.52). What we do not know as well is how to do it with minors. A recent study with 23 academy footballers with a mean age of 13.7 (Ferrini and colleagues, 2026) used 2 sets of 6 Nordics once a week for 9 weeks: hamstring eccentric strength rose 6.3%, there was only one hamstring injury in the whole study and the authors cannot claim a protective effect, because the sample is small.

A cautious progression (our own judgment, not a published protocol):

• Weeks 1 and 2: single-leg glute bridge and assisted lowerings, 1 or 2 sets of 3 to 5, with a 5-second lowering.
• Weeks 3 and 4: assisted Nordic with a band or with the hands at the end, 2 sets of 4 to 6.
• After that, once a week (within one of the two sessions) 2 sets of 4 to 6, which is the guideline of the Ferrini study.
• Do not start in the last week before an important competition: Nordic soreness can be strong.

Dose: what we know and what we decide

• Frequency: 2 sessions per week on non-consecutive days. It is the guideline of the 2014 consensus (2 to 3) and of the Argentine paediatric review, and the one used by 82% of the studies in the Oliver review. With the schedule of a youth club, two is realistic.
• Session length: 20 to 30 minutes according to the Argentine review, including the specific part. In our table we lower it to 5 to 15 minutes for the youngest.
• Sets and repetitions: 1 or 2 sets to begin with and up to 2 to 4 sets of 6 to 12 repetitions once technique is settled (2014 consensus). The Argentine review proposes 1 to 3 sets of 10 to 15 repetitions for the start.
• Progression: increase the load or volume by 5 to 10% as strength improves (Argentine review).
• Block length: the most effective programmes last more than 8 weeks and use several sets (2014 consensus). The Argentine review speaks of 8 to 12 weeks as a minimum per period.
• Expected response: strength gains of 30 to 40% in untrained young people with introductory programmes of 8 to 20 weeks (2014 consensus).
• Maintenance: strength is lost quickly when you stop (2014 consensus), so in season it is maintained with 1 to 3 sessions per week depending on the competition.

An important warning from the 2014 consensus: strength should not be an extra session on top of everything else. For a boy who already trains on his days and plays at the weekend, it should replace part of the specific work or competitive load, not be added to it. A lot of total volume with little recovery leads to overload and, in extreme cases, to overtraining. In a youth club, that translates into fewer long runs or fewer repetitive drills, not a longer training session.

How to fit it into a 60 to 90 minute session and into the week

The idea is that strength is not a separate section, but part of the warm-up and the opening block of the session. Ordered like this it works well (our own judgment, with the consensus logic that fatigue spoils technique):

• Minutes 0 to 10: FIFA 11+ style warm-up (or 11+ Kids for the little ones), which already includes running, strength, balance and jumps.
• Minutes 10 to 30: strength and landing block, with the group split into stations. The children are fresh and technique comes out better. If you have 60 minutes, cut it to 15.
• Rest of the session: main part with the ball. High-intensity games after strength work and not before.
• With 16 or more players, do 4 stations of 3 to 5 minutes and rotate. An assistant or an older player correcting a single station improves quality.

In the week, with three trainings and a match at the weekend, the simplest scheme is strength on the first and third day (for example Monday and Thursday, with the match on Saturday) and, on the day before the match, only light activation and landings with few repetitions, with no sets close to failure. After a demanding match, let a day go by before the next heavy session, and if the team plays two matches in a week, stay with a single maintenance session. All of this is our own judgment: the 2014 consensus only says that between one and three sessions per week during the season are enough to maintain or improve, depending on the competition.

The first, designed for the youngest (5 to 7 years old), is a good example of jumping and landing within a game. The other three are U14 to U15 and U16 to U18 circuits: adjust weights, times and repetitions to what the table above says, and remove the running work if the session already has a lot.

Strength and injury prevention

FIFA 11+ is a warm-up routine of about 20 minutes with running, strength, balance and jumps. In the meta-analysis by Thorborg and colleagues (2017), with 6 cluster-randomised trials, the 11+ reduced injuries by 39% (incidence rate ratio 0.61), while the previous programme, FIFA 11, showed no effect (0.99 with two studies). It is not possible to isolate which component makes the difference, but the 11+ includes strength, balance and jumps, and the results are consistent.

On the anterior cruciate ligament, the meta-analysis by Petushek and colleagues (2019) pooled 18 studies with 27,231 girls and 347 cruciate ruptures. Neuromuscular training reduced the risk from about 1 in 54 to 1 in 111, with a larger effect in high school athletes than in college or professional ones. In football, the odds ratio was 0.46. The most protective programmes combined landing stabilisation and lower-limb strength; adding balance, core, stretching or agility showed no additional measurable benefit for this specific injury (although they may help with others, such as ankle sprains). And those done during the season, or before and during, worked better than those done only in preseason, although this last comparison rests on only two studies.

Lessons for your team: start young (before the neuromuscular control deficits appear after the growth spurt), do it all year and do not drop it in October, and have someone who knows how to teach technique run it (all the programmes in that meta-analysis included training for those delivering them). Consistency weighs more than the exact dose.

Seven mistakes that keep recurring

1. Copying the adult programme. An elite youth player does heavy barbell sets after years of preparation. For your second-year U15 that is neither useful nor safe. Adapt the logic (progress, measure, recover), not the load.
2. Maximal loads in boys who have not matured. Testing a one-repetition maximum with a U13 in the middle of a growth spurt is the quickest route to an injury. If you need a measure, use the standing long jump, the vertical jump or the handgrip, which the 2014 consensus identifies as simple indicators, with a significant correlation with maximal strength in young people.
3. Doing jumps without teaching how to land. Height or rebound come last. First, landing silently and with the knees aligned.
4. Trendy exercises at an exhausting circuit pace. Doing many repetitions without rest until technique breaks down is risky. The consensus warns against high metabolic intensity programmes with insufficient recovery between sets.
5. Not recovering. A boy who trains at the club, at school and plays matches accumulates load. Adjust the volume to his full week.
6. Forgetting the girls. Same sessions, same rigour, and extra attention to landing and knee alignment from age 11 or 12.
7. Changing the programme every week. Technique is learned by repeating. Keep the patterns for four weeks and vary the difficulty, not the exercise.

A 4-week block by age group

A proposal of our own for a team that trains three days and plays at the weekend, with two strength sessions at the dose set by the age table. It is not a validated programme. It serves to get started and to see how your group responds.

Week 4 is a deliberate deload and it is not wasted time: it lets the body absorb the work and measure, with a simple jump, whether the block has worked. If a player improves little, do not panic: at this age part of the change is simply due to growth, and the 2014 consensus reminds us that growth and maturation can mask the effect of training.

If a player has persistent pain (knees, heels, back), a recent injury or a suspected illness, do not put him in the block without consulting his doctor or physiotherapist. A pre-participation screening is among the general guidelines of the Argentine paediatric review.

Coach's checklist

• I have checked that whoever leads the sessions knows how to correct technique and watches them closely; with large groups there is an assistant or stations.
• The dose is 2 sessions per week on non-consecutive days, not stuck on the day before the match.
• I have started each group at the level that suits their experience, not their birth year.
• The youngest work with games and bodyweight; external load comes only with proven technique.
• I measure height every three months and lower the volume for anyone in the middle of a growth spurt.
• Every session includes landings and knee control, not just high jumps.
• The Nordic is introduced in an assisted way and with few sets, from U12 onwards.
• Strength replaces another load of the week; it is not added on top.
• Girls and boys do the same, with extra attention to knee alignment in the girls.
• There is an 11+ or 11+ Kids style warm-up at the start of the sessions.
• No maximal repetitions or sets to failure for youth players; stop with 2 or 3 repetitions in reserve.
• Every four weeks there is a deload and a simple measurement (long or vertical jump).
• It is maintained during the season, even if with 1 session a week, instead of stopping in October.

Training strength in youth football is not about looking like a gym. It is teaching how to push, brake, jump and land well, and repeating it for years. The two short sessions of the week will probably be one of the cheapest investments you can make in your players' health and in how well they play.