A Worrying Trend With Teenagers and Young Adults

I remember being a teenager and wanting to have a six pack. At that age, you’re learning about life, you’re learning about your body, you’re comparing yourself to everyone else. That was without social media, its ‘Influencers’ and myriad of filters. I honestly can’t imagine what it’s like these days to be a teenager, or young adult. 

What I am seeing in teens and young adults, however, are the results of failed attempts to achieve unrealistic physiques, presumably following social media trends, across all of our clinics - in both NZ and Australia. 

To an extent I'm sure there will always be an obsession to get “jacked” as a young person starting to take agency over themselves and how they present to the world. But … the process, or way I'm seeing kids go about getting “a six pack” is completely wrong.

#nodaysoff and #200pushupsperday is not how you get jacked. It’s the opposite - a great way to get huge muscle imbalances and shitty posture. As a result, I'm seeing kids in a lot of pain from these muscle imbalances and poor posture, who frankly are too young to be getting these injuries! All of which are mostly sustained from focusing on a single exercise, such as a sit-up or a push-up.

I recently treated a 20 year old who needs surgery after giving themselves a hernia from doing 600 sit-ups per day, 7 days a week -  #nodaysoff.

To be honest, I actually love push-ups as an exercise. It involves a lot of muscle groups and studies have shown doing them can reduce the risk of cardiovascular insult, such as a heart attack.  But having watched a bunch of you doing your set of 80 push-ups, your form starts to fall apart anywhere from 15-25 reps. So as a physiotherapist, observing you do anymore beyond that, let alone another 60, is like watching a car crash. And many of you are doing it multiple times per day.   

When I ask why patients are doing this, the most common reason I hear is ‘to grow muscle’.

But muscles need recovery to grow, so #nodaysoff actually leads to the opposite for most people. Muscles grow when you do more sets and less repetitions, with the last few reps of the set being the most challenging. Always ensuring great technique throughout! 

Then, train a different muscle group the next day, to give those ‘just worked on’ muscles a chance to recover, rebuild and grow. 

Otherwise, only working one muscle group every day, focusing on just one or two exercises, also leads to one set of muscles getting really short and the others getting really long. Which can effectively make teens and young adults look like a turtle, complete with a rounded spine and head poking out at the top. If done enough, this is what leads to a lot of pain at an age where you just shouldn’t really be in any. 

The muscles also get really short because as you grow your bones grow faster and your muscles are playing catch up. Which leads to more compression on your joints. 

So, what should you do?

By all means if you're doing a challenge - go for it. But reduce your reps and increase your sets, so you can keep your form. When I film people’s form from 25 reps and up, they get a shock at how bad it looks. So remember - more sets, less reps!

It’s also good to try different push-ups e.g. wide grip, narrow grip and decline push-up positions. 

What else?

Do the opposite muscle group the next day. For example, one day do your push- ups then get a pull-up bar and do different forms of pull-ups. 

Do abs one day, then do some back extension work the next.

Finally, the number one rule - give your body a chance to recover. Go for a walk, or swim. Chill and rest. Believe it or not, this is when your muscles are doing the most growing.