How important is strength training for kids?
For seven years I've helped hundreds of kids learn how to train safely and effectively. What's surprised me most isn't the physical transformations — it's the mindset shift and the maturity that comes along with the skills they build in the gym.
What we've seen firsthand
We've run an after-school youth program at the gym for the last five years. Kids get off the middle school bus and join our Monday, Wednesday, Friday group. They work out together, play sports afterward in the parking lot while they wait to get picked up, then head home.
Here's the part that tells you it's working: when kids age out of the program, they don't stop coming. They become members and keep showing up after school, every day. They've built the habit of fitness into their normal routine — and when it's missing, they feel off. In a world of phones and screens, being “addicted” to the gym is about the best addiction a kid could have.
From a gym program to a foundation
A couple years ago, Chris Miazga and I noticed the impact this program was having and decided to take the mission beyond our own walls. That became the L.E.A.D. Foundation.
L.E.A.D.'s mission is to bring these same exercise programs to youth across the Troy, Schenectady, and Albany school districts. Today, our teams go out daily to 12 middle and elementary schools across those districts, reaching close to 1,000 kids a week through games, speed and agility work, and the foundational movements of strength training.
The results go well beyond fitness
The biggest impacts we've seen aren't just physical — though those are real too (strength, cardio, core, balance, stability). We've also seen increased confidence, better school attendance, improved grades, better behavior with fewer behavioral incidents at school, and stronger teamwork and communication skills.
Kids find community with each other. They learn to push themselves, lift each other up, and lead. Passing on the same lessons fitness taught us — to the next generation — is one of the most fulfilling things we do.
Fitness is like learning a language
If you learn Spanish, you can walk into any Spanish-speaking country and communicate. It's the same with fitness — learn it young, and you carry it with you anywhere: the high school weight room, a college gym, a new city. It's connected to more than physical health. It shapes social health too.
The real reward is getting to be a mentor. We push them to work just as hard on their dreams as they do in the gym.
Once fitness lives inside someone, it pulls them back even during the years they drift from it.
Where this leaves you
Give a young athlete a real foundation.
The Aspire Athletes Academy develops speed, power, and durability with the same professional-level testing and tracking. Program details and the free-trial path are covered on our programs page.