First off, I'd like to say how glad I am that I found this site. It's wonderful! So much great information. I've spent several hours reading through A LOT of posts and I've learned a lot of stuff, but I still have a bit of a dilemma. I'd really appreciate some feedback or advice from those of you who have experience with these issues. I'll try to make this as brief as possible. My son is 14 and he just started high school. He loves baseball, been playing since he was a little guy and has been dying to get to high school so he could play at a more competitive level. The school he attends has a reputation for having a great team and there are always lots of kids trying out so my son has been very serious about preparing for tryouts. One of the coaches held a meeting around Thanksgiving to have guys sign up and begin weight training. They train 4 days a week and the coach said that if they missed more than a couple of days, they would be crossed off the roster. This I didn't understand because doing the training doesn't guarantee you a spot on the team, you still have to try out and I would think that there are gonna be kids who show up for tryouts who weren't training for 3 months, but anyway, my son signed up because he wants to do whatever the coaches want and I totally agreed. So he's been training now for 2 weeks. There is basically no supervision in the weight room and the kids are told by the guy who runs the weight room, the gym teacher and basketball coach, to lift a lot of weight. They were never instructed on proper technique. They are only told what to do and how many of each thing. They bench press, do squats with the weights and things like that. My son came home and told me was benching 185, free weights. I almost had a heart attack. He was doing 145 with the squats. Now, I'm no professional but common sense dictates that you should start off relatively low and work your way up, so I had a talk with him and everything was cool. Then a kid, a rather promising freshman pitcher, had an accident when he lifted more than he could handle while doing squats. He fell and the bar landed on the back of his neck. He was rushed to the hospital. Turns out he fractured a vertebra in his neck and can never play sports again. I thought for sure the school would provide more supervision after this, but they didn't. Several days later, another kid got rushed off to the hospital because he started having seizures after lifting too much. Again, nobody was supervising at the time. I have a friend who is a personal trainer in New York and he flipped when I told him about the school's program. He said they shouldn't be working out 4 days a week for an hour and a half a day and they shouldn't be lifting so much, especially with no supervision and/or instruction on proper technique. He also said that they should be eating a certain diet while training. My son told me that guys in the weight room typically drink Coke and eat candy and other garbage while working out. So I am at a loss here. I don't want my son to continue doing this. He does pushups, situps and jogs on a daily basis and has a nice strong body. Heavy lifting can cause damage on a still developing body. My problem is that I'm afraid that if he drops out of the program it would make the coaches mad and hurt his chance of making the team. I have no experience at all with high school sports so could someone please tell me if this is typical of a school program. If this is what is expected of a kid hoping to play on the high school team then I'd rather my son didn't do it. It's not worth risking a long term injury. I'm dying to talk to a coach, but I'm hesitant to do that because I'm sure they wouldn't appreciate me questioning their methods. Any feedback or advice would be greatly appreciated.
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