Meanwhile in Costa Rica …

9 year old Hugo Bermudez squats 110kg for 11 Reps.

On the one hand I love that he is squatting heavy weights at that age, but on the other, I think no child should ever be obese. How do you feel about it?

Update: Casual Lurker makes good points in the comments.

One may think stupidity, idiocy and -on top of all- IGNORANCE has some limits, when it comes to sports training. Well, this is what happens when uneducated fools think that just beacause they lift some weights they are “Trainers”. They have never heard a thing about Phisiology, about Training Methodology, about Sensitive Periods, about Growth, or about something different than “C’mon! You can do it! Go for it! One more! Gooooood…”. And so they take a 9 year old, and start putting him some huge axial load, not caring about his bone development, his ligament development, his cartilage development, or his motor learning. Furthermore, they don’t care if his form (his technical skill) is truly awful, as long as they can say “Say, bro! I’ve got a 9 y.o. kid in my gym who squats 140kg!!!”. I would care less for him being obese, than for him squatting such weights. Have you never herd of Stages in weightlifting training? A quick reminder, First, this kid is in his Forming Stage, and he (his trainers) should wait before moving on (at +/- 14 y.o.) to the Competitive Achivements Stage. Second, in this ages there should not exist a Training Program, but a Teaching Program, where the kid develops his foundations on technique; it will be harder for Hugo to unlearn that shitty technique in the future, in order to re-learn the correct technique. And third, at Hugo’s age the emphasis is in the Multilateral Preparation (that is the armonic, integral and hollistic development of his Conditional and Coordinative Capacities), and in his General Fitness, with a pedagogical and didactical orientation (yes, that is PLAYING).

Let’s see what Hugo is doing ten years from now. Let’s wait for then to evaluate his health. I feel sorry for that boy.

And again, as my comments on the “Hip Clean” videos from CalStrenght, I shall repeat: Look and read about Training Theory and Methodology from the russians, cubans, germans, swedish, french and chinese. Don’t try to create or invent new methods without having a solid knowledge of the previous “tried-and-true” ones.