Looking for plan to keep 15 year old engaged

Training Q&A [Moderated]
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Thanks for all you’re doing. Strength training has changed our lives. My 15 year old daughter was diagnosed with T1 diabetes 2 years ago and so I committed to get back in shape so I could walk the walk in terms of diet and healthy living. I’ve relied heavily on your site for guidance and I’m happy to say that I’m now stronger at 44 than I was at 22 as a college athlete (went through Bridge 1.0 and now hypertrophy 2). I was able to convince my daughter to start lifting with me about a year ago. I started her on the SSLP and she took to it and really ran up her squat (175x5) and trap bar DL (200x5). She didn’t love the bench as much so she hovered around 65x5. She plays soccer and this has yielded huge dividends for her in that she’s much more powerful and has gone from the slowest girl on the team to the fastest. Around the same time we got into obstacle course races so she focused on getting her first bodyweight chin-up and she’s now up to sets of 2. Her endocrinologist asks her every visit how she manages so well (she uses about half the normal amount of insulin and her A1C is always spot on). The answer is that she’s driven to be strong now and that motivates her to eat right and she has a ton of lean body mass. She’s healthier as a diabetic than she was before her diagnosis.

The problem is that she’s losing interest in the repetitive nature of a powerlifting routine (S/DL/B/P over and over). I tried to move her over to the Bridge when I started it, but she said that she doesn’t want to just squat and deadlift every workout. For the last couple months now she lifts a couple times a week basically falling back to the SS routine or often just squatting and doing chin-ups. I’m sure that when she gets older she’ll appreciate the value hitting the main lifts every workout but for now, I’m trying to find something to keep her engaged. I think she’s also struggling with the fact that the “honeymoon” is over – she’s not adding 5 lbs to the bar every week anymore. She’s very driven and goal oriented, she just needs a goal that she’s interested in. She says that she wants to be able to do “cool stuff” which I think is calisthenics type stuff she sees online. Can you suggest a routine or way to spice up the routine to keep her engaged?

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BHealth,

Thanks for the post and kudos to you for getting your daughter involved as well!

Based on present evidence, enjoyability of physical activity is closely related to adherence rates. With that in mind, we’d recommend something like the 2nd phase of our Beginner Template where she gets to pick her own exercises for the relevant slots. After that stops working, we’d recommend she moves on to phase 3. Alternatively, you could swap in any preferred “analogue” you daughter prefers for squats or deadlifts that work similar muscle groups, e.g. split squats, front squats, leg press for “squats” and RDL’s, hip thrusts, etc. for “deadlifts”. I think resistance training requires a somewhat narrow focus on exercising with external loads than straight-up calisthenics, but calisthenic work can be included in programs as well if she wants to train pushups, pull ups, etc. as part of her GPP work.

Finally, we would not expect most individuals to be able to add 5lbs to the bar each session or every week for an extended period of time (> 3 months), so some autoregulation might be nice to ensure proper workload levels vs. focusing on adding weight in pre-determined increments every workout or week. Different repetition ranges would also likely be helpful.

-Jordan

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