Back-to-School Fitness: Strength-Training Tips for Teens

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Always Train Your Lower Body: Teens often get into the habit of just working their upper body, but the real power and strength comes from your legs, hips and glutes. Power is not created from the top down, but from the ground up. Also, by exercising the lower body, this creates a higher demand on the cardiorespiratory system, which in turn causes the heart to deliver more oxygen and blood to those regions, and it will create higher caloric expenditure.

Training the lower body also creates a stronger fitness base for a person. When your legs have strength, power and endurance, you're more likely to perform well at activities that demand explosiveness, running, walking up inclines and other endurance activities. If your upper body is getting tired, your legs will help with a boost of power.

More: 5 Lower Body Exercises Every Man Should Do

Additional Tips

Add a Flexibility Component: Adding a flexibility program is something that most athletes and exercise enthusiasts often don't like doing, but the benefits are worth the extra effort. Stretching your muscles increases their blood supply, and this allows for greater circulation and nutrient transportation throughout body.

Introduce Instability: The goal of this training is to work the main muscles groups and strengthen and increase the muscular endurance of the smaller muscles in the hips, knees, ankles and core muscles. For example, try doing a standing shoulder press while balancing on one leg. This will force the body to activate stabilizers in the ankle, knee, hip and core all at once while performing the exercise. This training has a strong correlation with injury prevention.

More: 4 Core Exercises for Stability, Strength and Injury Prevention

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