Before the Scholarship, Before Varsity, There Was a Kid Learning to Deadlift
Key Takeaways (TL;DR)
A viral-worthy transformation — a 6-year-old deadlifting 12 pounds becoming an 18-year-old college football player pulling 355 — isn't about the weights. It's about the 12 years of consistency in between.
The best question parents can ask isn't "How fast can my child get stronger?" It's "What habits can my child build today that will still serve them ten years from now?"
The right age to start strength training is before your child needs to be stronger — long before varsity tryouts, scholarships, or college athletics enter the picture.
At Mighty Oak Athletic in Westmont, kids as young as 6 learn to squat, hinge, push, pull, and carry safely — building patience, focus, and confidence along with strength.
The strongest athletes aren't the ones who started lifting the heaviest. They're the ones who started building the earliest.
Every Mighty Oak Starts as a Tiny Acorn
One of my favorite videos we've ever filmed starts with a six-year-old.
He's standing over a 12-pound weight. A yoga block sits beneath it so he can practice the correct starting position. The lift isn't heavy. It isn't impressive by social media standards. No one is going to mistake him for a college athlete.
And that's exactly the point.
The video ends with an eighteen-year-old college football player confidently deadlifting 355 pounds.
Most people see the beginning and the end.
We see everything in between.
Thousands of reps. Hundreds of training sessions. Small improvements nobody noticed because they happened one day at a time.
The world celebrates the 355-pound deadlift. We celebrate the 12-pound one just as much.
Because the first lift is where the second one begins.
The Question Parents Ask — and the Better One
Too often, parents want to know how quickly their child can become stronger, faster, or more athletic. They ask which program produces the biggest results in the shortest amount of time.
They're asking the wrong question.
The better question is: What habits can my child build today that will still serve them ten years from now?
Strength isn't built in a weekend. Confidence isn't built in a weekend. Discipline isn't built in a weekend.
Those things grow quietly, almost invisibly, until one day everyone notices what years of consistency have created.
That's how an acorn becomes an oak.
The Weight Is Just a Tool
At Mighty Oak Athletic, our youngest athletes don't train because they need to lift heavy weights. They train because they need to learn how to move well, listen, focus, overcome challenges, and believe they can do hard things.
The weight is simply a tool.
The real goal is building capable young people.
When we teach a six-year-old how to hinge correctly, brace their core, or finish a deadlift with good posture, we're not just coaching a movement. We're teaching patience. We're teaching attention to detail. We're teaching that doing something well matters more than doing it fast.
Those lessons compound.
Year after year, they become stronger bodies, more resilient minds, and confident young adults. Strong to be useful — in sports, in school, and in life.
When Should a Child Start Strength Training?
People often ask us, "What's the right age to start strength training?"
Our answer is simple: The best time to start isn't when your child needs to get stronger. It's before they need to.
Long before scholarships, varsity teams, or college athletics enter the picture, there is a child learning how to squat, push, pull, carry, and pick something up safely from the floor.
That's where athletic development really begins.
The strongest athletes aren't usually the ones who started lifting the heaviest. They're the ones who started building the earliest.
Plant the Seed
The six-year-old in the video isn't trying to become an eighteen-year-old overnight.
He's simply becoming a little better than he was yesterday.
That's enough.
Because every mighty oak starts as a tiny acorn.
Plant the seed. Protect it. Be patient. Trust the process.
One day, you'll look back and realize the 355-pound deadlift started with a child, a 12-pound weight, and a yoga block.
Ready to plant the seed? Mighty Oak Athletic coaches young athletes ages 6–18 in Westmont, serving families across DuPage County — including Downers Grove, Clarendon Hills, Hinsdale, Darien, and Oak Brook. Every athlete's journey starts the same way ours does: with a single session.
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Kids can safely begin structured strength training around age 6, once they can follow directions and focus for a coaching session. The goal at that age isn't lifting heavy — it's learning to squat, hinge, push, pull, and carry with good technique under qualified supervision.
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Yes, when it's coached properly and scaled appropriately. A 6-year-old practicing a hinge pattern with a 12-pound weight from an elevated block is learning safe movement mechanics — the same skill that protects their back every time they pick something up off the floor for the rest of their life.
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Kids improve coordination, confidence, and movement quality within weeks — but the real payoff compounds over years. Athletes who start young build a foundation that later becomes visible strength, speed, and resilience in high school and beyond.
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Mighty Oak Athletic is located at 6424 S. Cass Ave. in Westmont, IL, and trains athletes ages 6–18 from across DuPage County, including Downers Grove, Clarendon Hills, Hinsdale, Darien, and Oak Brook. Every new family starts with a free training session.
What Is the Army Fitness Test in 2026? The New AFT, Explained
Key Takeaways
The Army Fitness Test (AFT) replaced the ACFT on June 1, 2025. Five events, 500-point maximum, minimum 60 points per event: 3-Rep Max Deadlift, Hand-Release Push-Ups, Sprint-Drag-Carry, Plank, and 2-Mile Run.
The Standing Power Throw is gone — cut because it produced more training injuries than useful readiness data.
There are now two passing standards: soldiers in 21 designated combat MOSs must score 350+ under sex-neutral scoring; everyone else needs 300+ under sex- and age-normed scoring. Both require 60 in every event — fail one event and the whole test fails, regardless of total.
The combat standard has had teeth since January 1, 2026 for active duty (June 1, 2026 for Guard and Reserve): failing brings an administrative flag, and combat-MOS soldiers who can't meet 350 face possible reclassification.
If you're preparing to enlist or commission: train the deadlift and the 2-mile run hardest. One rewards absolute strength, the other exposes anyone who skipped their aerobic base — and they're at opposite ends of the fitness spectrum on purpose.
Get the free MOA Military Prep Guide. The AFT, Marine PFT, service academy CFA, and ROTC standards in one place — event breakdowns, where candidates lose points, and a twelve-week progression laid out week by week.
Training in the Chicago suburbs? We coach future soldiers, academy applicants, and ROTC candidates in person at our Westmont facility. See the military prep program.
What Is the Army Fitness Test in 2026? The New AFT, Explained
The Army has changed its fitness test three times in recent memory, which is why half the internet still says "APFT," the other half says "ACFT," and the test your recruit will actually take is called neither.
Here's the current test, why it changed, what the scores mean, and how to train for it — written for the people I coach: high schoolers heading to basic, ROTC candidates, and the parents trying to keep up with the acronyms.
The short version
Since June 1, 2025, the Army's official test is the Army Fitness Test (AFT). Five events, in order:
3-Repetition Maximum Deadlift (MDL) — heaviest weight you can pull off the ground three times on a hex bar.
Hand-Release Push-Ups (HRP) — max reps in two minutes, hands lifted off the ground at the bottom of every rep.
Sprint-Drag-Carry (SDC) — five 50-meter shuttles: sprint, sled drag, lateral shuffle, kettlebell carry, sprint. For time.
Plank (PLK) — max hold.
2-Mile Run (2MR) — for time.
Each event is worth up to 100 points, for a 500-point maximum. Every event has a floor of 60 points — drop below it on any single event and you fail the entire test, no matter what your total says.
Why the Army changed the test — again
Two reasons, and they're both instructive if you're the kind of person who trains for a living.
First, injuries. The old ACFT included a Standing Power Throw — hurling a 10-pound ball backward over your head. It turned out to be the test's biggest source of training injuries while telling the Army very little about combat readiness that the other events didn't already capture. So it's gone. Six events became five, and the old 600-point maximum became 500.
Second, the data said the standards needed restructuring. The Army analyzed over a million ACFT administrations and rebuilt the scoring around a dual-standard system:
Combat MOS standard: soldiers in 21 designated combat jobs — infantry, armor, combat engineers, and so on — are scored sex-neutral and must total 350 or better. Same tables for men and women. The job doesn't care who's carrying the litter.
General standard: everyone else is scored on sex- and age-normed tables and must total 300 or better.
That combat standard stopped being theoretical on January 1, 2026 for active duty (June 1, 2026 for Guard and Reserve). Failing now brings an administrative flag that blocks promotion and reenlistment — and a combat-MOS soldier who can't reach 350 can be reclassified out of the job entirely.
What the scores actually mean
The score questions people search — "is 432 good," "is 465 good," "what's the minimum" — sort out like this:
300 — minimum pass, general standard.
350 — minimum pass, combat MOS, and a respectable general score.
400–450 — above average, and where promotion competitiveness starts to live.
450+ — top tier. A 465 has had specific policy significance tied to body-composition rules, but that policy has been revised more than once — treat any claim about score-based exemptions as perishable and check the current regulation rather than a blog post, including this one.
500 — max. Rare, and requires being genuinely strong and genuinely conditioned, which is the whole design.
That last point deserves a sentence. The AFT deliberately puts a maximal deadlift and a 2-mile run in the same hour. Powerlifters lose points on the run; runners lose them on the bar. Maxing this test requires being good at both ends of the spectrum — which is exactly what a strength-and-conditioning program builds and a single-focus program doesn't.
How to train for it
The same base we build for every military-bound athlete covers the AFT, with two emphases:
The deadlift is free points for the trained and a wall for the untrained. The MDL is performed on a hex bar — the same tool we start teens on. If you've spent a year progressively deadlifting twice a week, this event is a warm-up. If you've never pulled from the floor, no amount of push-ups will save your total. Start here.
The Sprint-Drag-Carry punishes the unprepared more than any other event. It's 90 seconds of everything at once — sprinting, dragging a sled backward, carrying kettlebells. Loaded carries, sled work, and short shuttle intervals are the preparation. It's also the event where technique (low sled position, tight turns) buys real seconds.
The plank and push-ups reward the same trunk. Hollow-body holds, weighted planks, and honest push-up volume in clean sets. The hand-release standard removes the half-rep bounce, so train the full range from day one.
The 2-mile run follows the same rule as every military run: mostly easy aerobic mileage, a weekly dose of intervals at faster than goal pace, and strength work underneath so your stride holds up in mile two. If you read the Marine PFT piece, the run prescription is the same and so is the reason.
And rehearse the whole test. Five events in sequence is its own stressor. The deadlift you pull fresh and the run you start forty minutes into a test are different animals. At least two full rehearsals before test day.
If you're a parent reading this
The acronym soup — APFT, ACFT, AFT — isn't your kid's problem to solve. Their problem is simpler and older: get strong, build an aerobic base, and do both for months before they ship, not weeks.
A teenager who deadlifts, carries, does strict push-ups, and runs easy miles twice a week walks into any version of any branch's test prepared. The test names keep changing. What the tests measure hasn't changed since the Spartans.
Be strong to be useful.
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The Army Fitness Test (AFT) is the Army's official physical assessment, replacing the ACFT on June 1, 2025. It has five events — 3-Rep Max Deadlift, Hand-Release Push-Ups, Sprint-Drag-Carry, Plank, and 2-Mile Run — with a 500-point maximum and a required minimum of 60 points per event.
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Two reasons: the Standing Power Throw caused a disproportionate share of training injuries while adding little readiness information, and analysis of over a million ACFT results led the Army to restructure scoring into a dual-standard system separating combat and non-combat roles.
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The AFT has five events instead of six (the Standing Power Throw was removed), a 500-point maximum instead of 600, and a new dual standard: combat MOS soldiers are scored sex-neutral with a 350-point minimum, while all other soldiers are scored on sex- and age-normed tables with a 300-point minimum.
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300 total under the general standard, 350 under the sex-neutral combat MOS standard — and in both cases at least 60 points on every individual event. Scoring below 60 on any single event fails the whole test regardless of total.
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Failure triggers an administrative flag that blocks promotion, reenlistment, and favorable actions until a passing retest. Combat-MOS soldiers who cannot meet the 350 combat standard can additionally face mandatory reclassification into a non-combat specialty.
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For untrained candidates, the 3-Rep Max Deadlift and the Sprint-Drag-Carry — the deadlift exposes anyone who has never trained with a barbell, and the Sprint-Drag-Carry combines sprinting, sled dragging, and loaded carries into roughly 90 seconds of continuous output.
How to Score a 300 on the Marine PFT
Key Takeaways
A perfect Marine PFT score is 300 points: 100 each from pull-ups, the plank, and the 3-mile run. Choosing push-ups instead of pull-ups caps your maximum at 270 — you cannot score a 300 without pull-ups.
The score classes that matter: 1st Class, 2nd Class, and 3rd Class, with a minimum of 40 points required in every individual event. Bomb one event and you fail the whole test, regardless of total.
For men 17–26, maxing pull-ups means 23 reps. The plank is scored the same for everyone — max points at 3:45. The run standard varies by age and sex.
Pull-ups are where most scores live or die — and they respond to strength training faster than any other event. Grinding daily max sets is the slowest way to get there.
Verify your exact scoring bracket against the current Marine Corps order (MCO 6100.13A) or an official calculator — standards are age- and genger-banded and get updated.
Training in the Chicago suburbs? We coach poolees, academy applicants, and ROTC candidates in person at our Westmont facility.
Get the free MOA Military Prep Guide. The PFT, the CFA, the Army Fitness Test, and ROTC standards in one place — event breakdowns, where candidates lose points, and the twelve-week progression laid out week by week.
How to Score a 300 on the Marine PFT
Every Marine, every poolee, and every high school kid with a recruiter's phone number knows the number: 300.
It's a rare score. Most Marines never touch it. But here's what a decade of coaching strength has taught me about tests like this one: the gap between a average score and an elite one is almost never about effort. It's about training the right things in the right order.
Here's the test, where the points actually live, and how to train for each event.
The test, in one paragraph
The Marine PFT is three events: pull-ups or push-ups (your choice), a plank, and a 3-mile run, each worth up to 100 points, all completed in a single session. The plank replaced crunches under MCO 6100.13A. Every event has a minimum — score below it on any single event and you fail the entire test, no matter how strong your total is.
The first decision: pull-ups, full stop
The Corps lets you choose push-ups instead of pull-ups. Don't — not if you care about your score.
Push-ups cap at 70 points. Choose them and your maximum possible PFT is 270, not 300. A 1st Class score is still reachable on push-ups, but the distinguished scores are not, and everyone reading your fitness report knows which event you picked.
For men in the 17–26 bracket, maxing the event means roughly 23 dead-hang pull-ups — full extension at the bottom, chin over the bar, no kip. For women in the same bracket the max standard is lower in reps but identical in points. The exact numbers shift by age band, so check your bracket against the current order.
Ten strict pull-ups puts you ahead of the vast majority of American men. Twenty puts you in another category entirely. Which is exactly why this event separates scores — and why it rewards actual training over motivation.
How to build pull-ups (the part most people get wrong)
The default plan — max out every day until the number goes up — is the slowest possible route, and it's how shoulders get cranky.
What works, in order:
1. Build volume below failure. Take half your max and do that number in sets spread through the day, most days. If your max is 8, do sets of 4. Frequency grows pull-ups; failure grinds them.
2. Add strength work behind the pattern. Heavy rows, weighted negatives with a 3-to-5-second descent, and — once you're past 10 or so strict reps — weighted pull-ups. The fastest way from 15 reps to 23 is making bodyweight feel light.
3. Train grip and the hang. Dead hangs, farmer's carries. Late-set failure is grip failure more often than lat failure.
4. Test rarely. Every two or three weeks, fresh. Testing daily is spending your training budget on measurement.
A kid who runs that progression for six months doesn't add two pull-ups. He adds eight.
The plank: free points if you train it like a lift
The plank is scored identically for every age and sex — max points at 3 minutes 45 seconds. It's the most democratic event on the test and the one people prepare for least, usually by holding occasional long planks and hoping.
Train it like a strength quality instead: weighted planks for shorter durations, hollow-body holds, heavy carries. Build a trunk that holds 4:30 under load and 3:45 unloaded on test day is a formality — even with your arms already smoked from pull-ups.
That sequencing point matters, and it's the same lesson from the Candidate Fitness Assessment: these events are consecutive. Rehearse the full test, in order, before test day. Fresh-event numbers lie.
The 3-mile run: mostly easy, occasionally fast
The run standard is age- and sex-banded — for a young male Marine, an 18-minute 3-mile is the historic 100-point benchmark, with roughly a point lost per 10 seconds behind the best-time threshold.
Most people training for it make one mistake: every run is medium-hard. The structure that actually moves a 3-mile time is roughly 80 percent easy aerobic running — conversational pace, genuinely easy — and 20 percent fast work: 400- and 800-meter repeats at faster than goal pace, plus tempo runs.
And underneath it: strength. Runners with strong hips and posterior chains hold form in mile three when everyone else's stride collapses. Squats and deadlifts are run training. That's not a strength coach's bias — it's why the kids we train drop their run times without adding mileage.
What the scores actually mean
The questions people search — "is a 250 good," "what is a 235," "what's the average" — all resolve to the same frame:
300 — max. Rare. The point of this article.
1st Class — the line that matters for promotion competitiveness and for showing up to boot camp ahead of the curve.
2nd and 3rd Class — passing, with a floor: at least 40 points in each event.
Below minimum on any event — failing the whole test. And consecutive failures carry real administrative consequences for serving Marines.
If you're a poolee or a high schooler prepping to ship: don't train for the minimum. The minimum is a trap. Train for 1st Class from day one, and the minimum stops being a question you ever have to ask.
The 12-week frame
Same structure we use for academy and ROTC candidates, adjusted for the PFT's events:
Weeks 1–4: strength base — squat, hinge, row, press; pull-up volume below failure; easy running; weighted plank work begins.
Weeks 5–8: weighted pull-ups and negatives; interval running enters; first full PFT rehearsal at the end of week 6.
Weeks 9–11: two more full rehearsals; attack your weakest event between them.
Week 12: taper. Half the volume, keep the intensity, full rest 48 hours out.
Three months of that beats three years of random max-out sessions. The 300 isn't a talent score. It's a preparation score.
Be strong to be useful.
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Max all three events: pull-ups (23 reps for males 17–26), the plank (3 minutes 45 seconds), and the 3-mile run (age- and sex-banded best time). Choosing push-ups instead of pull-ups caps the maximum score at 270, so a 300 requires pull-ups.
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Passing requires meeting the minimum for your age and sex bracket, but minimums are a trap — the scoring is weighted so the first reps carry the most points, and competitive 1st Class scores require training well beyond the minimum. Males 17–26 need 23 pull-ups for the full 100 points.
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A 1st Class score is the meaningful line — it affects promotion competitiveness and marks a Marine as ahead of the curve. A perfect score is 300, which is rare. Every event also carries a per-event minimum of 40 points; scoring below it on any single event fails the entire test.
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Failing any single event below its minimum fails the whole test regardless of total score. For serving Marines, consecutive PFT failures across reporting periods can lead to administrative consequences up to separation processing.
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No. The plank is the one event scored identically for all ages and sexes — maximum points at 3 minutes 45 seconds.
Can My Kid Pass the Service Academy CFA?
Key Takeaways
The Candidate Fitness Assessment (CFA) is a six-event battery run consecutively in under 40 minutes: kneeling basketball throw, cadence pull-ups (or flexed-arm hang), shuttle run, modified sit-ups, push-ups, and a one-mile run. It's required for West Point, the Naval Academy, and the Air Force Academy.
The events are sequenced deliberately to produce a cumulative loading effect. Candidates who train each event in isolation and never rehearse the full battery get ambushed by the one-mile run.
The two events where candidates lose the most points are pull-ups and the basketball throw — one is a strength problem, the other is a technique problem almost nobody practices.
Twelve weeks is a realistic runway from "unprepared athlete" to "competitive score." Six weeks is a rescue mission. Two weeks is a scoring exercise, not a training plan.
The CFA is one component of the Whole Candidate Score. A strong score won't carry a weak file, but a weak score will absolutely sink a strong one.
Based in the Chicago suburbs? We coach academy applicants and ROTC candidates in person at our Westmont facility. See the military prep program.
Can My Kid Pass the Service Academy CFA?
Most parents find out about the CFA about six weeks before their kid has to take it.
That's usually the phone call I get: a senior, a nomination in progress, a test date on the calendar, and a family that just discovered their three-sport athlete cannot do six pull-ups.
Good news: the CFA is one of the most trainable tests in existence. Bad news: only if you start early enough.
Here's what it is, where kids lose points, and what a real twelve-week runway looks like.
What the CFA actually is
The Candidate Fitness Assessment was developed jointly by the service academies to measure whether a candidate can handle the physical program at West Point, Annapolis, or the Air Force Academy. It's six events, administered consecutively in under 40 minutes, with specified start, finish, and rest times.
The events, in order:
Kneeling basketball throw — three attempts, throwing a men's basketball for distance from a kneeling position.
Cadence pull-ups — as many as possible in cadence. Women may substitute a flexed-arm hang if they cannot complete at least one pull-up.
Shuttle run — a 40-yard shuttle, run as four 10-yard segments with turnarounds.
Modified sit-ups (crunches) — maximum reps in two minutes.
Push-ups — maximum reps in two minutes.
One-mile run — for time.
Each event converts to a scale score from 0 to 100. Hitting the 100-point ceiling on any of the first five events means you stop — extra reps don't help.
Get the official standards from the source, not from a forum. The scoring tables and full administration instructions live on the academy admissions sites — West Point's CFA instructions and the Naval Academy's CFA page are the two I send families to. Standards get revised. Don't train off a number you found in a Reddit thread from 2019.
The part that gets kids
Read that phrase again: administered consecutively, sequenced to produce a cumulative loading effect.
That's not accidental. The test is designed so that fatigue from event two is still in your arms during event five, and everything you've done for 35 minutes is in your legs when you toe the line for the mile.
I have watched strong athletes post practice numbers that would score well — pull-ups on a fresh set, a solid mile on a fresh day — and then lose 15 points on test day because they had never once run the mile with 200 crunches and a max push-up set already in the tank.
Rehearse the full battery, in order, at least three times before test day. That's not extra training. That's the actual skill.
Get the free MOA Military Prep Guide The full breakdown of the CFA, USMC PFT, Army Fitness Test, and ROTC assessments — event standards, where candidates lose points, and the twelve-week progression above laid out week by week.
Where candidates lose the most points
Pull-ups. This is the biggest gap I see, and it's a pure strength problem. The average high school athlete — including varsity athletes in most sports — has never trained a vertical pull under load. Football, baseball, and soccer build nothing here. The fix isn't doing more pull-ups. It's building the pulling strength first: heavy rows, lat pulldowns, weighted negatives with a slow three-to-five-second descent, and band-assisted work at a rep range that actually accumulates volume. Kids who grind out singles to failure three times a week get sore and don't improve.
The basketball throw. This one is almost free points and almost nobody trains it. It's a power and technique event — the throw comes from the trunk and shoulder with a straight arm, more javelin than free throw, and the ball is gripped against the forearm rather than balanced on the palm. Five throws, twice a week, plus general rotational power work (med-ball throws, overhead throws) will move this event more than anything else in the battery per hour invested. Show up having never thrown from your knees and you'll leave a large number of points on the field.
The mile, on tired legs. Not because the kids can't run — because they've never run it eighth in line behind five other events.
The shuttle run, crunches, and push-ups are where most reasonably fit athletes already score acceptably. Those are the ones to maintain, not the ones to obsess over.
What twelve weeks looks like
This is the structure we use with academy applicants and ROTC candidates at Mighty Oak Athletic.
Weeks 1–4 — Build the base. Three strength days a week: squat, hinge, vertical pull, horizontal pull, press. Load progresses weekly. Add two easy aerobic days — 20 to 30 minutes, conversational pace. Pull-up work is volume-focused and sub-failure. Basketball throw practice starts now: five quality throws, twice a week. No full CFA rehearsals yet.
Weeks 5–8 — Convert strength to test performance. Strength work continues but drops to two heavy days. Add one interval running day: 400s and 800s at faster than mile pace. Pull-up work shifts toward cadence practice — the CFA is done on a count, not at your own tempo, and that difference is worth reps. Run your first full CFA rehearsal at the end of week 6. Record every number. That rehearsal is your real baseline.
Weeks 9–11 — Sharpen. Two CFA rehearsals, one week apart. Between them, attack the two lowest-scoring events specifically. Keep one heavy strength day so you don't detrain the thing that got you here. Mile pace work gets sharper and shorter.
Week 12 — Taper. Cut volume roughly in half, keep intensity. Full rest 48 hours out. Eat normally on test day — real food, at a normal time, nothing new, no pre-workout experiments.
Two things parents should know
First: the CFA is not the whole application. It feeds into the Whole Candidate Score alongside academics, class rank, leadership, and the nomination process. A great CFA doesn't rescue a thin file. But a poor CFA is one of the easiest ways to weaken a strong one — and it's the single most fixable component in the entire application.
Second: start before senior year if you possibly can. A junior who spends a year building real pulling strength walks into the CFA as a formality. A senior who starts in September is running a rescue operation. Both can work. One is a lot less stressful for everyone in the house.
The kids who do well on this test aren't the most gifted athletes. They're the ones who found out what the test was early enough to train for it.
Be strong to be useful.
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The CFA is a six-event physical test required for admission to the United States Military Academy, Naval Academy, and Air Force Academy. The events — kneeling basketball throw, cadence pull-ups or flexed-arm hang, shuttle run, modified sit-ups, push-ups, and a one-mile run — are administered consecutively in under 40 minutes and scored on a 0-to-100 scale per event.
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Kneeling basketball throw, cadence pull-ups (flexed-arm hang is the female alternative), 40-yard shuttle run, modified sit-ups for two minutes, push-ups for two minutes, and a one-mile run for time.
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Pull-ups, followed by the basketball throw. Pull-ups are a strength deficit most high school sports don't address; the basketball throw is a technique event that candidates rarely practice. Both are highly trainable with a twelve-week runway.
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Twelve weeks is a realistic runway to move from an untrained athlete to a competitive score. Six weeks can produce meaningful improvement in the technical events. Anything under three weeks is test familiarization, not physical preparation.
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No. The CFA is one component of the Whole Candidate Score, alongside academics, class rank, leadership, and a congressional or service-connected nomination. A strong score supports an application; it does not replace the rest of the file.
Screens Are Winning - Here's How a 6-Year-Old Fights Back
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E96 - Screens Are Winning - Here’s How a 6-Year-Old Fights Back
Key Takeaways
Strength is like a well: you dig it years before you need it. Kids who start at 6 build bone density, movement patterns, and confidence that pay off at 12, 16, and 60.
Waiting for a problem — an injury, poor posture, low confidence — means starting from behind. Early training is prevention, not performance.
The "lifting stunts growth" myth is dead. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the NSCA agree: supervised, age-appropriate strength training is safe and beneficial for kids.
At age 6, training means bodyweight first — squatting, hinging, crawling, carrying, hanging — taught by a qualified coach, one clean rep at a time.
Dig the Well Before You're Thirsty
Leo is six. Last Tuesday he spent forty-five minutes at Mighty Oak Athletic squatting to a box, bear crawling the length of the turf, carrying a sandbag hugged to his chest, and hanging from a pull-up bar until his grip gave out and he dropped, grinning, to the mat.
His mom watched from the bench by the door. When the session ended, she asked the question I hear every single week: "Isn't he a little young for this?"
I asked her a question back. "When's the best time to dig a well?"
She looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Fair. But here's the answer: before you're thirsty.
Nobody digs in a drought
Most families find strength training the same way they find a plumber — after something breaks. A shoulder that aches every throwing season. Posture collapsing under a backpack and six hours of screens. A kid who quits a sport because they're always the slowest, the weakest, the last one picked.
By then, the family isn't training. They're rehabbing. They're playing catch-up against years of missed development. It works — kids are wonderfully adaptable — but it's harder, slower, and it started with pain.
Strength doesn't work on demand. You can't cram it the week before tryouts. Bone density is built across childhood and banked for a lifetime. Movement patterns — squat, hinge, push, pull, carry — are grooved most easily when the nervous system is young and hungry to learn. Confidence compounds like interest. All of it takes time, and time is the one thing a six-year-old has more of than anyone else in the gym.
That's the well. You dig it now, quietly, one session at a time, so the water's there when the drought comes — the growth spurt, the tryout, the season, and eventually the long game of being a durable adult human.
"But won't lifting stunt his growth?"
No. That myth has been dead for years — the science just travels slower than the fear.
The American Academy of Pediatrics' clinical report on youth resistance training states plainly that supervised, age-appropriate strength training is safe for children and carries real benefits: stronger bones, better body composition, improved motor skills, and fewer sports injuries. The National Strength and Conditioning Association says the same. The consistent finding across the research is that injuries in youth training come from poor supervision and poor technique — not from training itself.
Which is exactly why how a six-year-old trains matters more than whether they train. At MOA, a six-year-old doesn't touch a loaded barbell. They earn their way through a bodyweight-first progression: squat to a box before squatting free, hinge with a dowel before a kettlebell, crawl and carry and hang and jump — supervised by a certified strength and conditioning coach who teaches one clean rep at a time. Load comes later, only after movement is owned. That's not a marketing line. That's the safety system.
Strong to be useful
Here's what Leo's mom couldn't see from the bench: her son wasn't just exercising. He was learning that hard things are doable. That his body is a tool he can trust. That effort — not talent — is what moves the needle.
We tell every kid at MOA the same thing: be strong to be useful. Strong enough to carry the groceries, help a teammate up, haul their own hockey bag, and someday shovel their neighbor's driveway without a second thought. Strength isn't about the mirror. It's about capacity — physical and mental — that the world will absolutely, eventually call on.
You don't know when the drought's coming. You just know it is.
Dig the well now.
Ready to start digging? Mighty Oak Athletic offers a free training session for new athletes ages 6–18. Book yours at MightyOakAthletic.com — and see what one clean rep at a time can build.
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Strength qualities like bone density, movement patterns, and coordination develop most efficiently during childhood and compound over time. Starting at 6 means a child builds these foundations before growth spurts, sports seasons, and injuries test them — prevention instead of rehab. Waiting for a problem means starting from behind.
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Bodyweight first. At Mighty Oak Athletic in Westmont, IL, 6-year-olds learn to squat to a box, hinge with a dowel, crawl, carry, jump, and hang — supervised by a certified strength and conditioning coach. Loaded barbells come years later, only after movement patterns are owned.
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Yes. Research cited by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the NSCA shows that appropriately coached resistance training improves bone strength, motor skill, and body control, and reduces sports injury risk in young athletes. The injuries seen in youth training come from poor supervision and technique — not from training itself.
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Kids who train early bank higher bone density, cleaner movement patterns, better coordination, and durable confidence — advantages that carry through the teenage years and into adulthood. Early strength training builds a more capable, resilient human, not just a better athlete.
Stop Fixing Five Things at Once - Fix This One
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E95 - Stop Fixing Five Things at Once - Fix This One
Key Takeaways
A keystone habit is one habit that triggers a chain reaction of other positive changes — and exercise is the most powerful one researchers have found.
Kids who strength train consistently tend to eat better, sleep better, manage screen time better, and procrastinate less — without anyone nagging them.
Australian researchers found that when people start exercising regularly, they spend less impulsively and follow through more at work and school.
Strength training gives kids a weekly "win" that rewires how they see themselves: I'm someone who shows up and does hard things.
You don't have to fix everything at once. Fix the training habit first, and watch the rest start to follow.
The One Habit That Changes All the Others
A mom in Westmont once told me she had a list of things she wanted to fix about her son’s routine. Too much screen time. Junk food after school. Homework pushed to the last possible minute. Bedtime negotiations that dragged on like labor disputes.
She asked which one to tackle first.
My answer surprised her: none of them. Start with training.
Not because the other stuff doesn’t matter. Because of something researchers call a keystone habit — a single habit that, when it takes hold, sets off a chain reaction that changes other patterns in your life. Charles Duhigg made the idea famous in The Power of Habit, and exercise is his go-to example. People who work out in the morning find it easier to eat a healthy lunch that same day. There’s something about your legs being a little sore that makes the salad easier to choose than the burger.
It gets stranger than that. Researchers Megan Oaten and Ken Cheng in Australia tracked people who started a regular exercise program and found changes nowhere near the gym. On days they exercised, people used their credit cards less. They procrastinated less at work. They smoked less and left fewer dishes in the sink.
Nothing about going for a run tells your brain to leave the credit card in your pocket. But the exercise habit seems to strengthen the same underlying muscle — self-regulation — that governs everything else. Train it in one place, and it shows up everywhere.
Now apply that to a 12-year-old.
At Mighty Oak Athletic, I’ve watched this chain reaction run for over a decade with kids from Westmont, Downers Grove, Hinsdale, Clarendon Hills, and Willowbrook. A kid starts training twice a week. Nobody lectures him about nutrition — but a month in, he’s asking what he should eat before a session, because now the food has a job to do. Nobody mentions sleep — but she starts going to bed earlier on training nights, because she noticed she lifts better rested.
Parents will tell me, almost confused, that homework battles have gotten quieter. That the kid who couldn’t stick with anything has now shown up every week for six months.
Here’s why I think strength training is the single best keystone habit for a kid — better than a sport, better than a chore chart.
First, progress is visible and measurable. The bar doesn’t lie. A kid who deadlifts more this month than last month has hard evidence that effort compounds. That lesson transfers to math homework faster than any lecture.
Second, it’s a habit built on identity, not outcomes. Sports seasons end. Teams cut kids. But “I’m someone who trains” is an identity a kid carriesinto high school, college, and adulthood. Identity is what keeps a habit alive when motivation quits.
Third, it produces the soreness signal. That mild next-day awareness in your legs is a physical reminder: I invested in myself yesterday. Duhigg’s point about the salad and the burger applies to kids too. A kid who trained Tuesday is a little more likely to pick the better option Wednesday — no parental nagging required.
So if your child’s routine feels like a game of whack-a-mole — screens, food, sleep, homework, attitude — resist the urge to fix everything at once. That approach fails adults, and it definitely fails kids.
Fix one thing. Make it training. Two sessions a week, every week, with a coach who makes it worth showing up for.
Then stand back and watch what else starts to change.
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A keystone habit is a single habit that, once established, sets off a chain reaction of other positive changes. Exercise is the most-studied example: people who train regularly also tend to eat better, sleep better, spend less impulsively, and procrastinate less — even though nobody asked them to change those behaviors.
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Strength training gives kids visible, measurable progress (the bar doesn't lie), builds an identity — "I'm someone who trains" — that outlasts any sports season, and strengthens self-regulation, the same underlying skill that governs eating, sleep, homework, and screen time.
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At Mighty Oak Athletic in Westmont, IL, we coach athletes ages 6 & up. Research and major governing bodies support supervised, properly coached strength training for children, with an emphasis on movement quality and progressive loading appropriate to each kid's development.
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Two sessions per week, every week, is enough to establish the keystone habit and start the chain reaction. Consistency matters far more than volume — a kid who never misses two weekly sessions will outpace a kid who trains five days one week and zero the next.
About the Author
Coach Mike Ockrim is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), USA Weightlifting L1 Coach, USA Triathlon Coach, and second-degree black belt. He has taught group fitness at Life Time for more than eight years and founded Mighty Oak Athletic in Westmont, Illinois in 2013, where he coaches young athletes ages 6–18. He also co-founded Sunday Funday Sports, a DuPage County youth sports nonprofit, and is the author of three books: Death Resistant, 13 Pounds in 30 Days, and MOA Nutrition.
Open Your Fridge: This Photo Test Predicts Your Kid's Health
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E94 - Open Your Fridge: This Photo Test Predicts Your Kid's Health
Key Takeaways
Young athletes don't drive, shop, or earn — parents control 90% of what's in the fridge, so kids' nutrition is largely a parent responsibility.
The fix is access: cut-up fruit and veggies, pre-cooked proteins, pasta, rice, and potatoes ready to grab at eye level.
When real food is the default, ultra-processed treats become minor deviations, not the diet.
Death Resistant maxim: don't drink your sugar. Eat it instead — food's fat and fiber slow digestion and blunt the blood sugar spike and crash.
Think of every food choice as a deposit or withdrawal in the Health Savings Account. Keep the ledger positive, not perfect.
The Most Important Piece of Training Equipment Is Your Refrigerator
Last night my son came home from practice with fast food from a chain restaurant. Not exactly a coach’s dream dinner. But buried in that meal was a genuine win: he mentioned that he never takes the pop that comes “free” with the combo. He always asks for water instead.
His friends can’t understand it. The pop is included! It tastes great! And his answer is the part every parent should hear: once he stopped drinking pop, he stopped craving it.
That’s not willpower. That’s biology. Food scientists have engineered sugary drinks to keep you coming back — and when you remove them long enough, the craving fades. The human body adapts in both directions. The question is which direction your household is training it.
Kids don’t buy groceries. Parents do.
Here’s an uncomfortable truth we share with every Mighty Oak Athletic family: young kids don’t have jobs, disposable income, or a ride to the grocery store. They eat what’s in the house. If the food in the house is unhealthy — or if the healthy food requires 30 minutes of prep a hungry 12-year-old will never do — that’s not a kid problem. That’s a parent problem.
If a child is eating poorly or gaining more weight than medical professionals consider healthy, responsibility falls almost entirely on the adults stocking the kitchen.
The good news: the fix isn’t complicated. It’s access. Look at the photo of my fridge that accompanies this post. It’s not fancy. It’s stacked with containers of ready-to-eat real food:
Cut-up fruit and vegetables (or buy them pre-cut — no shame in that)
Pre-cooked chicken, ground turkey, and hard-boiled eggs
Pre-made pasta, rice, and potatoes
Soups, plain yogurt, cheese, olives
A hungry kid opens that fridge and the fastest option is the healthy option. That’s the whole strategy.
Ultra-processed food will find your kids anyway
As kids get older, they gain freedom — friends’ houses, team dinners, gas station runs. Parents lose minute-by-minute control, and ultra-processed food is engineered to be delicious. I get it. I love Cool Ranch Doritos.
But here’s the point: if kids have consistent daily access to real, nutritious food at home, those deviations stay exactly that — deviations. A bag of chips at a sleepover is a rounding error inside a diet built on whole foods. It only becomes a problem when the deviation is the diet.
The Health Savings Account
In Death Resistant, we call this the Health Savings Account. Every food and beverage choice is either a deposit or a withdrawal. Not every choice needs to be a deposit — but the ledger has to stay positive. When the account runs chronically negative, the body imposes penalties: fatigue, inflammation, weight gain, weak bones. Being healthy isn’t about being perfect. It’s about keeping the balance growing so there’s room to enjoy life’s culinary pleasures.
Don’t drink your sugar
Which brings us back to the pop. A core Death Resistant maxim: don’t drink your sugar. Liquid sugar — pop, sports drinks, juice, sweetened coffee — hits the bloodstream with nothing to slow it down, producing a fast spike and a hard crash. When sugar comes packaged in actual food, the accompanying fat and fiber slow digestion and blunt that spike. Eating loads of sugar still isn’t a good idea — but if sugar is coming in, it’s better eaten than drunk. Water with meals, sugary drinks reserved for genuinely special occasions.
Stock the fridge. Prep the food. Drink the water. Your kids’ bodies — and their future cravings — are trained at home first.
About the Author: Michael Ockrim is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), USA Weightlifting L1 Coach, USA Triathlon Coach, and second-degree black belt. He has taught group fitness at Life Time for more than eight years, founded Mighty Oak Athletic in Westmont, Illinois in 2013, co-founded Sunday Funday Sports, and is the author of three books: Death Resistant, 13 Pounds in 30 Days, and Mighty Oak Athletic Nutrition.
Stop Raising Harmless Kids — Strength Is What Makes Kindness Real
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E93 - Stop Raising Harmless Kids — Strength Is What Makes Kindness Real
Key Takeaways
Harmless is not the same as good — restraint only counts as virtue when a kid actually has strength to restrain
Kindness means more when it's a choice, not a limitation
Capable kids get quieter, not louder — real confidence doesn't need an audience
MOA trains kids to be capable, not aggressive: strong to be useful
Raising Kids Who Are Strong AND Good
There’s an old proverb: those who have swords and know how to use them — but keep them sheathed — will inherit the world.
Strip away the sword imagery and there’s a lesson in there that every parent should hear, because it’s the exact opposite of how our culture often talks to kids about strength.
Harmless is not the same as good
Somewhere along the way, we started confusing harmless with virtuous. A kid who never pushes back, never takes up space, never tests their limits gets labeled “good.” But think about what that label is actually rewarding. If a child is incapable of standing up for themselves — physically, socially, emotionally — then their quietness isn’t a choice. It’s a default. There’s no character in a restraint you never had to exercise.
Now flip it. A kid who is strong, fast, and confident — and who chooses to be kind, to include the smaller kid, to help carry the groceries, to walk away from the dumb confrontation — that kid is displaying real virtue. Their gentleness means something because it’s a decision, not a limitation.
That’s the heart of it: self-control is only a virtue if there’s something to control.
What this looks like in the gym
At Mighty Oak Athletic, we don’t train kids to be tough for toughness’ sake, and we certainly don’t train them to be aggressive. We train them to be capable. There’s a difference, and kids feel it immediately.
A 10-year-old who can deadlift with clean form, carry a heavy kettlebell across the gym, and climb without fear carries himself differently at school. Not louder — usually quieter, actually. Capable kids have nothing to prove. The kids who posture and push are almost always the ones who feel weak underneath. Confidence built on real capacity doesn’t need an audience.
We say it all the time because it’s the foundation of everything we do: be strong to be useful. Strength isn’t for dominating anyone. It’s so you can shovel the neighbor’s driveway, carry your own backpack, protect a younger sibling, and someday lift your own kids overhead without your back giving out. Usefulness is the point. Strength is the tool.
What to discuss with your kiddo
If they ever ask why they train, keep it simple: “So you never have to be afraid — and so being kind is always your choice.” The rest they’ll figure out under the bar.
The world doesn’t need more harmless kids. It needs more capable ones who choose to be good. That’s what we build at Mighty Oak Athletic — one rep, one sheathed sword, at a time.
Mighty Oak Athletic trains athletes ages 6–18 in Westmont, Illinois, using barbells, kettlebells, and bodyweight movement in every session, coached by a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. Schedule a free trial session at mightyoakathletic.com.
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No. Research and coaching experience show the opposite: structured strength training teaches self-control, patience, and discipline. At Mighty Oak Athletic, kids learn to never load a bar past what they can control — thousands of small reps of governing their own power.
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It's the Mighty Oak Athletic training philosophy, rooted in physical educator Georges Hébert's motto. Strength exists to serve others — carrying, helping, protecting — not to dominate. We train capability, not aggression.
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MOA trains athletes ages 6–18 in Westmont, Illinois, using barbells, kettlebells, and bodyweight movement scaled to each child's development, coached by a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS).
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Confidence built on real capability doesn't need an audience. Kids who can lift, carry, and climb with competence carry themselves with quiet assurance at school — they have nothing to prove.
The Dumbest Exercise Your Kid Is Probably Doing - The Dangerous Exercise Taking Over Weight Rooms
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E92 - The Dumbest Exercise Your Kid Is Probably Doing - The Dangerous Exercise Taking Over Weight Rooms
Key Takeaways
Are trap bar jumps safe? Every landing pulls the loaded bar down through the arms and shoulders — that's why coaches cue "land soft and dump the weight." The research behind the trend measured power output, not injuries or shoulder health.
Does adding weight to a sport movement improve performance? The track record says no: weighted baseballs raised velocity a few percent and injured roughly one in four pitchers versus zero in the control group, and the donut bat makes swings feel faster while measuring slower.
What builds explosive power instead? Progressive strength in the classic lifts — cleans, jerks, snatches, presses, pull-ups, rows, deadlifts, squats — where the bar finishes racked or overhead and supported. The sport itself supplies jumping at game weight and game speed.
What should an athlete do about a worrying exercise? Say one sentence: "Coach, can we talk about this exercise?" A coach can only train the athlete they know about, and the response tells families everything.
The Dangerous Exercise Taking Over Weight Rooms
My son came home from college and walked me through his team’s new lifting program. Most of it was solid. Then he got to the trendy one: trap bar jumps.
Picture it. Your kid stands inside a steel frame loaded with weight plates, grabs the handles, and jumps as high as he can. Then he lands. With the weight still in his hands.
Every weight room in America is running some version of this right now. And I think it’s one of the dumbest ideas in sports.
Gravity Always Wins
Here’s the problem — no lab coat required. Gravity doesn’t care that your kid left the ground. On the way down, that loaded bar wants to keep falling, and it’s attached to his arms. Every landing, the weight rips downward through his grip and shoulders while the rest of his body slams into the floor. Coaches even have a survival cue for it: “Land soft and let the weight dump.” When an exercise comes with instructions for surviving the landing, the landing is the problem.
We’ve Seen This Movie Before
Parents of a certain age know how this one ends.
Remember weighted baseballs? Coaches swore that throwing heavier balls would build stronger arms. When researchers finally tested it with high school pitchers, velocity went up a few percent — and one in four kids got hurt. The group throwing regular baseballs? Zero injuries.
Remember the donut bat in the on-deck circle? It makes the game bat feel lighter. Feel being the key word. When somebody actually measured, the donut made the next swings slower, not faster. Hitters have been psyching themselves out for fifty years.
Same trick, new toy. Add weight to a sport movement and you don’t get a stronger version of the skill. You get a slower, distorted version — rehearsed at the exact moment your kid is trying to sharpen the real one. Jumping is a skill. For a volleyball or basketball player, it might be the skill. Hanging a loaded bar off it is the donut bat all over again, with your kid’s shoulders picking up the tab.
And the science behind the trend? The studies measured how much power athletes crank out mid-jump. That’s it. Nobody counted injuries. Nobody checked a single shoulder.
Ten Seconds of Courage
Now here’s the part that actually matters — because my problem that night wasn’t really the exercise.
My son had shoulder surgery a few years ago. Football injury. Months of rehab, the whole ride. And his strength coaches were about to run him through loaded landings without knowing any of it. Not because they’re bad coaches. Because he never told them.
That was the real danger: silence.
So we skipped the rant and practiced a sentence instead: “Coach, I had shoulder surgery a couple of years ago. Can we talk about this exercise?”
Ten seconds of courage. That’s the whole assignment.
And parents, listen: how a coach answers that sentence is the best coaching evaluation you will ever get for free. A good coach leans in, asks questions, and finds another road to the same destination — there is always another road. A coach who rolls his eyes at a surgically repaired shoulder just told you everything.
This is bigger than the weight room. Teach your kid to say the sentence to anybody in charge — coaches, doctors, teachers. Adults can be excellent and still be missing information. Adults can also just be wrong. Your kid is the only person who lives in their body full time, and the only one who can speak up for it in the moment.
What to Do Instead
Get strong at the lifts that were built to build athletes — cleans, jerks, snatches, presses, pull-ups, rows, deadlifts, squats — where the bar finishes racked or overhead, supported, not tearing through your arms in mid-air. Then let your kid’s sport handle the jumping, at game weight and game speed. Strong in the gym. Springy on the court. Never confuse the two rooms.
We’re not training for a season. We’re building bodies — and voices — that hold up for decades.
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They're popular and promoted for power, but every landing pulls the loaded bar down through the arms and shoulders — which is why coaches cue athletes to land soft and dump the weight. The research behind the trend measured power output, not injuries or shoulder health. Coach Mike does not program weighted jumps for any athlete.
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The track record says no. A weighted baseball study raised pitch velocity a few percent but injured roughly one in four pitchers versus zero in the control group, and weighted-bat research shows the donut makes swings feel faster while measuring slower. Adding load distorts the skill instead of sharpening it.
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Progressive strength in the classic lifts — cleans, jerks, snatches, presses, pull-ups, rows, deadlifts, and squats — where the bar finishes racked or overhead and supported. The sport itself supplies jumping, sprinting, and cutting practice at game weight and game speed.
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Say one sentence to the coach: "I had shoulder surgery a couple of years ago — can we talk about this exercise?" Sharing injury history is not defiance; a coach can only train the athlete they know about, and the coach's response tells families a great deal about the program.
Coach Mike Ockrim is the founder of Mighty Oak Athletic in Westmont, Illinois. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), USA Weightlifting Level 1 Coach, and USA Taekwondo Coach, and the author of three books: Death Resistant, 13 Pounds in 30 Days, and Mighty Oak Athletic Nutrition.
What Happens When Your Sidelines Go Quiet: My Kids Grew Up - Here's What I Do With the Free Time
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E91 - What Happens When Your Sidelines Go Quiet: My Kids Grew Up - Here's What I Do With the Free Time
My kids are older now. High school and college. The seasons of standing on their sidelines, of loading the car for the zoo, of being needed every waking minute — those seasons have mostly come and gone. And here’s what nobody tells you about that stage of parenting: it hands you back something you forgot you had. Time.
I could have filled that time with more work. There’s always more work. Instead, I decided to give it to something I love. Strength training has been my first love since before I could drive, and coaching is the way I know how to share it. So when the opportunity came to connect with Special Olympics and work with their athletes — track and field, powerlifting, flag football, softball, the whole spread of sports these athletes train for — I said yes before I finished hearing the question.
Recently, Coach Libby (our Mighty Oak Athletic dog mascot) and I made our way out to see the athletes at their final practice before they headed off to their state championship events. I want to be careful not to oversell this, so let me just say it plainly: it was one of the best Saturdays I’ve had in years.
Picture a track full of athletes running, jumping, handing off relay batons — with more passion and energy than I’ve seen at meets three times the size. Teammates cheering for teammates. Families cheering for kids they’d never met. Every finish line, no matter the place, treated like a photo finish at the Olympics. The whole atmosphere was contagious in the best possible way.
But what got me wasn’t the events. It was the welcome.
The first time Coach Libby and I walked up, you would have thought John Cena or The Rock had rolled in. These athletes were genuinely thrilled that new people had come out to share the experience with them. They wanted to pet the dog. They wanted to tell me about their lives, their events, their goals. And when it came time to coach, they leaned in.
Here’s something every coach will understand. When I gave a cue — adjust your start, drive your arms, finish through the line — nobody rolled their eyes. Nobody said “I know.” They said thank you. Then they tried it, full effort, right away. They wanted to learn and they wanted to do their best, and that combination is the whole secret of getting better at anything. I’ve coached athletes at every level for more than a decade, and I’m telling you: that attitude is rarer than talent, and these athletes have it in abundance.
I drove home thinking about what we’ve built at Mighty Oak Athletic. Our gym in Westmont has become a pod of energy — kids encouraging kids, families showing up for each other, effort celebrated over outcomes. That culture didn’t happen by accident. We built it, rep by rep, over years. And standing on that track, I realized the athletes of Special Olympics have built the exact same thing. Same values. Same joy. Same belief that strength — physical and otherwise — is worth chasing your whole life.
So this isn’t a one-time visit. As Mighty Oak Athletic continues to grow, we’re going to keep growing our participation with Special Olympics and find ways to share what we’ve built — our coaches, our community, our energy — with communities beyond our four walls. Be strong to be useful. That’s always been the standard here. And I can’t think of a more useful way to spend a Saturday than helping an athlete chase a personal best on the way to a state championship.
If your kids are getting older and your sidelines are getting quieter, take it from me: there’s a track somewhere that would be thrilled to see you walk up. You might arrive as a stranger. You’ll leave as family.
P.S. — If getting involved with these athletes sounds like something for you — volunteering, coaching, sharing your time, or even donating a few dollars to help cover the basic resources that keep their sports going — just email. I’d love to connect you.
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Coach Mike Ockrim connected with Special Olympics as a volunteer coach, working with athletes preparing for track and field, powerlifting, flag football, and softball — a natural fit for a strength and conditioning coach with over a decade of youth coaching experience.
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Athletes train and compete across a wide range of sports, including track and field, powerlifting, flag football, and softball, with local programs culminating in state championship events.
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Coachability. Athletes respond to instruction with gratitude and immediate full effort — the single trait that most accelerates improvement in any sport at any level.
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Reply to the Mighty Oak Athletic newsletter or reach out through mightyoakathletic.com. Opportunities include volunteering, coaching, sharing your time, or donating to help cover basic resources for the athletes.
Why We Keep the Wrong Scoreboard in Youth Sports
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E90 - Why We Keep the Wrong Scoreboard in Youth Sports
Walk into Mighty Oak Athletic on a Tuesday afternoon and you can feel it before you see it. Kids are laughing. A barbell clicks back into the rack. Somebody just hit a lift they couldn't do last month, and the whole group is fired up about it. This is the quiet, everyday side of youth sports — no crowd, no scoreboard — and it is the part I love most.
Here is what surprises a lot of parents: kids like getting stronger. They like seeing a number go up, hitting a new personal best, and feeling capable in their own body. Give a kid a clear goal, good coaching, and a room full of people cheering for them, and they show up happy. That is the whole game.
So what are we actually doing in there, under all the fun?
We are building two things at once. The first is obvious: a stronger, more athletic kid. The second is quieter but matters more — a more confident one. A kid who learns they can take on something hard, stick with it, and come out the other side better. That lesson shows up in their sport, but it also shows up at school, at home, and everywhere else for the rest of their life.
That is why we don't measure success the way youth sports usually does. The scoreboard, the trophy, the minutes played — those are fine, but they hide the things that actually matter. (There is a great idea in Think Like a Freak by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner: figure out the right thing to measure, and everything gets clearer.) So at MOA we watch for the real signs of progress. A kid who couldn't hold a plank now holds it with ease. A beginner who was nervous around the barbell now coaches a friend through a lift. A kid who used to melt down after a missed rep now shrugs it off and tries again. When a young athlete walks out stronger, steadier, and more sure of themselves than the day they walked in — with a lower risk of injury in their sport — that is a win, no matter what any record book says.
Good coaching is how we get there, and it is so much more than calling out the next drill. Our coaches read the room. They know when a kid needs a push and when a kid needs a breather. They turn a frustrating set into a small victory. They make the hard parts feel good enough that a kid wants to come back and do it again — and that part is everything, because the kids who keep showing up are the kids who get strong.
The method itself is simple on purpose. Kids start as young as six. Everyone learns to move three tools well: their own bodyweight, a kettlebell, and a barbell. We build around four patterns the body uses for life — Squat, Hinge, Press, and Pull — and we add weight only after the movement looks good. There is no secret sauce and no shortcut. There is just good coaching, repeated often, in a place kids actually want to be.
All of it sits on the Death Resistant approach we teach every family: Recovery, Movement, Nutrition. Rest hard so you can train hard. Move well before you move heavy. Eat real food. Do those things consistently and a young athlete doesn't just get stronger for this season — they build habits that keep them healthy for decades.
That is the destination we are driving toward with every kid: strong to be useful. Strong enough to help, to carry, to show up, and to handle whatever life puts in front of them. We get to start that work on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon — and the kids leave smiling. That is the best part.
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A great youth coach does more than run drills. The best youth coaches develop people — building skill, confidence, toughness, and character while teaching kids to move and train safely. At Mighty Oak Athletic in Westmont, IL, Coach Mike Ockrim describes three levels of coaching: calling drills, leading practice by reading the group, and developing people. The goal isn't to win the weekend; it's to move a young athlete forward.
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Measure the right scoreboard. Wins, playing time, and trophies are outcomes that hide real growth. Better measures are whether the athlete added a skill, gave honest effort, took correction better than last month, supported a teammate, came back after a bad day, and lowered their risk of injury. If a kid leaves stronger, more capable, and more confident than they started, the coaching worked.
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Kids can start as young as six. At Mighty Oak Athletic, young athletes learn to move their own bodyweight, a kettlebell, and a barbell under coaching, building around four patterns for life: Squat, Hinge, Press, and Pull. Proper coaching helps reduce injury risk while building real, lasting strength.
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No. The "secret" is consistency. Kids improve with repetition, feedback, sleep, good food, encouragement, and time. Tired athletes need rest, uncoordinated athletes need basic movement practice, and unsure athletes need small, repeated wins. Mighty Oak Athletic anchors training in the Death Resistant framework: Recovery, Movement, Nutrition.
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Mighty Oak Athletic is a youth strength and conditioning gym in Westmont, IL, serving athletes ages 6 and up across DuPage County and the western Chicago suburbs.
Coach Mike Ockrim, CSCS, is the Founder & CEO of Mighty Oak Athletic, a youth strength & conditioning facility in Westmont, IL, and the Founder of Sunday Funday Sports, a nonprofit youth sports league. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and a Life Time group fitness instructor with over eight years on the platform. He is the author of Death Resistant: A Common Sense Guide to Live Long and Drop Dead Healthy, 13 Pounds in 30 Days, and Mighty Oak Athletic Nutrition.
Why We Make Six-Year-Olds Do Hard Things on Purpose
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E89 - Why We Make Six-Year-Olds Do Hard Things on Purpose: Kids Need Struggle to Grow Strong
There’s a worry running through every honest conversation about the next generation, and it goes something like this: when a machine can hand a kid the answer before they’ve even finished asking the question, the kid never has to do the reaching. And the reaching was the whole point. The part of the mind that wrestles, that sits in the discomfort of not-knowing, that pushes through a hard problem and comes out the other side proud — that part only stays sharp if it gets used. Take the effort away and it quietly fades.
That’s not a metaphor for atrophy. That is atrophy.
And here’s the part most people miss: the exact same thing is happening to kids’ bodies, for the exact same reason.
Learning and lifting run on the same engine
Real growth — the kind that sticks — requires friction. The mind only develops by struggling against problems it can’t immediately solve. The reward shows up after the effort, not before it, and a kid who never feels the effort never learns to go looking for what’s waiting on the other side. They never get the specific, honest pride of having made something hard with their own two hands.
Your child’s body works on an identical principle. Muscle, bone, tendon, and the nervous system that coordinates all three only grow stronger when something demands more of them than they’re comfortable giving. Physiologists call it the SAID principle — Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. In plain English: the body changes in response to what you make it do. Lift something challenging, and it builds the tissue to handle it next time. Wolff’s Law says the same about bone: load it, and it lays down density to meet the load.
Take the demand away and the process reverses. We have brutal proof of this. Put a healthy adult on a few weeks of bed rest and they lose measurable muscle and bone. Send an astronaut into the weightlessness of orbit — the ultimate friction-free environment — and their skeleton starts thinning so fast that exercise becomes non-negotiable just to come home walking. No resistance, no reason to adapt. Comfort isn’t neutral. Comfort is a slow leak.
A generation engineered for ease
Now look at the world we’ve built for our kids. Screens that entertain without asking for anything back. A device in their pocket that answers any question before the thought is fully formed. Recess shortened, PE cut, free play swapped for structured screen time. We have, with the best of intentions, sanded the friction out of childhood.
The worry for the mind — that a kid raised on instant answers never learns the pride of producing something original — has a physical twin. A kid raised on instant comfort never finds out what their own body is capable of. They never feel the satisfaction of doing something genuinely hard with their back and their legs and discovering they were stronger than they thought.
That feeling isn’t a luxury. It’s how a human being learns they can do hard things at all.
Strength training is the friction we put back
This is the entire reason Mighty Oak Athletic exists, and it’s why we start kids as young as six. We are not in the business of making them tired. We are in the business of giving back the productive struggle a frictionless world quietly stole.
Every session a kid trains with us touches a barbell, a kettlebell, and their own bodyweight. That’s deliberate. Each one teaches the body a different kind of climb — loading a bar, controlling a swinging weight, owning the space their own body moves through. None of it is easy. All of it asks for something. And when a seven-year-old finishes a set they didn’t think they had in them, you can watch the lesson land on their face: the hard part was the point.
The physical payoff is real and well-documented. Properly coached, supervised resistance training builds the bone density, joint stability, coordination, and tissue resilience that reduce a young athlete’s injury risk for years to come. But the payoff that keeps parents coming back isn’t the deadlift numbers. It’s the kid who starts treating hard things as climbable instead of avoidable — at the gym, then at the desk, then everywhere.
This is the core of our Death Resistant philosophy. It starts with Recovery, runs through Movement, and is fed by Nutrition — but underneath all of it is one stubborn truth the modern world keeps trying to talk us out of: things that don’t get challenged don’t get stronger. Not minds. Not muscles. Not kids.
You can’t outsource the climb. But you can make sure your kid still gets to make it.
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Yes. When it's properly coached and supervised, resistance training is safe for children and is associated with stronger bones, better coordination and joint stability, and reduced injury risk in young athletes. The risk comes from poor supervision and bad technique, not from the training itself.
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Mighty Oak Athletic starts kids at age six. The early focus is on movement quality and learning to handle load through a barbell, kettlebell, and bodyweight — not on lifting maximal weight.
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The body only adapts in response to demand — a principle called Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands (SAID). Muscle, bone, and the nervous system grow stronger when challenged and weaken when they aren't. Comfort and inactivity lead to loss of strength and bone density, which is why deliberate, productive challenge matters for a growing child.
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Productive struggle is meaningful effort against a challenge a child can eventually overcome. It's how kids learn — both academically and physically — that they're capable of doing hard things. Strength training is one of the clearest, most measurable ways to give a child that experience.
12 Weeks. 12 Chances. Don't Waste Them.
Key Takeaways
Twelve weeks without training isn't neutral — strength, conditioning, and mobility all decline measurably in 6-to-18-year-old athletes who take the summer off.
Foundational summer training for youth athletes should include the squat, deadlift, overhead press, and power clean — plus sprints, change of direction, and short, sport-specific conditioning.
A CSCS (Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist) credential is the gold standard for youth strength coaching.
Look for coached programs with real progressions, not open gyms or whiteboard workouts.
Mighty Oak Athletic runs an unlimited-session summer program for student athletes ages 6–18 in Westmont, IL ($199/month, six days a week, first session free).
Your Kid's Summer Has 92 Days. Don't Spend Them On The Couch
Every summer, parents in Westmont and the surrounding suburbs tell me the same thing in June: "We're just gonna let him take a break and have a normal kid summer."
Then they say the same thing in August: "Why does he look slower than he did in May?"
That's not a coincidence. That's biology.
The body doesn't sit still while a kid takes the summer off. It adapts to whatever you give it. Twelve weeks on the couch isn't neutral — it's twelve weeks of slow regression. Strength drops. Mobility tightens up. Conditioning evaporates. The kid who walked off the field in May confident and bouncy walks back onto it in August feeling stiff, sluggish, and a step behind.
Meanwhile, the kid who trained all summer? She didn't just maintain. She gained. She's stronger, faster, more confident, and harder to push around. She didn't get lucky. She got coached.
That gap doesn't close on its own.
What Summer Training Should Actually Look Like
Most parents picture summer training and imagine a sport camp — a week of skills work, maybe a tournament weekend, then back to the pool. That's fine. It's just not what builds an athlete.
What builds an athlete is the same boring, repeatable stuff that's worked for a century. Pick something heavy up. Put it down. Push something heavy overhead. Pull yourself up to a bar. Sprint. Jump. Land. Repeat for twelve weeks under a coach who actually watches you do it.
That's the foundation. Sport-specific skills sit on top of it. You can't out-skill a weak body, and you can't out-camp a missing foundation.
For a 6-to-18-year-old, that means a few non-negotiables:
The squat and the deadlift — the two lifts that build real lower-body strength. The overhead press — for shoulder strength, posture, and durability. The power clean from the floor — the single best movement for explosive athleticism. Sprints, change of direction, and footwork — because strength without speed is just heavy. And short, intense conditioning that actually transfers to sport, not pointless long-distance running.
Get those reps in three to five days a week for twelve weeks, with a coach calling out the cues, and you've changed the athlete. Skip them, and you've changed the athlete too — just in the wrong direction.
What to Look For in a Summer Program
If you're shopping for somewhere to send your kid this summer, here's the short checklist:
Is it coached, or is it a gym membership? Open weight rooms are great for people who already know how to lift. They're a disaster for kids who don't. Your kid needs eyes on every rep, not a key fob and a free water bottle.
Is there a real progression? A good program knows where every athlete is and where they're going next. If "the program" is whatever's on the whiteboard that day, run.
Does it train boys and girls the same? Strong girls become confident women. If a program softens the standards for girls, it's not serving them.
Is the coach actually qualified? A CSCS (Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist) is the gold standard for youth strength coaching. Anyone can call themselves a trainer. Not everyone has earned the credential.
Does it use barbells? Real barbells, not just bands and bosu balls. Nothing else loads the body as honestly or builds strength as predictably.
What We Built at Mighty Oak Athletic
This is the program we run for student athletes ages 6 through 18 — every summer, six days a week, in Westmont. Twelve weeks. Unlimited sessions. One flat price. Every kid gets coached every rep through our nine-level color progression system, starting at white and working toward black.
Athletes come from Hinsdale, Clarendon Hills, Downers Grove, Darien, Burr Ridge, Oak Brook, Willowbrook, and every middle school and high school in between. Football players prepping for August two-a-days. Volleyball and basketball kids chasing a vertical. Soccer players trying to outrun the field. Cross country kids who want legs that don't fall apart. And plenty of kids who don't play a sport yet — just want to get stronger and feel good in their own body.
Beginners are welcome. Every athlete starts at zero and builds up. The first session is free.
Twelve weeks. Twelve chances a week. Don't waste them.
Be strong to be useful.
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The week after their spring season ends. The single biggest summer training mistake is waiting until July to "get serious." By then a third of the summer is gone.
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Three to five. Fewer than three doesn't move the needle. More than five without proper recovery is counterproductive.
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Yes — when coached properly. Decades of research from the National Strength and Conditioning Association confirm that supervised barbell training is one of the safest forms of youth athletics and significantly reduces injury risk.
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Mighty Oak Athletic runs a CSCS-coached summer strength and agility program for student athletes ages 6–18 at 6424 S. Cass Avenue in Westmont, IL — six days a week, unlimited sessions, $199/month. First session is free.
Coach Mike Ockrim, CSCS, is the Founder & CEO of Mighty Oak Athletic, a youth strength & conditioning facility in Westmont, IL, and the Founder of Sunday Funday Sports, a nonprofit youth sports league. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and a Life Time group fitness instructor with over eight years on the platform. He is the author of Death Resistant, 13 Pounds in 30 Days, and Mighty Oak Athletic Nutrition.
Why Your Daughter's UV Obsession Is Wrong
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E86 - Why Your Daughter’s UV Obsession Is Wrong
Key Takeaways
10–15 minutes of midday sun on bare arms and legs provides a full day's vitamin D for fair-to-medium skin types.
Vitamin D synthesis requires a UV index of 3 or higher.
The body has a built-in cap on vitamin D production per session — more sun past the cap adds zero vitamin D, only UV damage.
A UV index of 5 is sufficient for full vitamin D synthesis with far less skin cancer and photo-aging risk than UV 8+.
"Minimum effective dose" applies to sun the same way it applies to strength, cardio, and nutrition.
15 Minutes
I took a nutrition class at the University of Arizona during my undergrad. Honestly, I don’t remember much from it — but one line from the professor has stuck with me for almost thirty years:
“Fifteen minutes in the Arizona sun gets your body all the vitamin D it needs for the day.”
That was it. That was the whole lesson. And it’s been quietly running in the background of how I think about health ever since.
Because that one sentence captures something we’ve collectively forgotten: the most powerful inputs for our health are already all around us — we just have to make the effort to go get them.
We’re drawn to supplements. We’re drawn to gadgets. We’re drawn to whatever new bottle promises to optimize our biology. Meanwhile, the sun is right outside. The air is right outside. Gravity is right outside. Water is right outside.
The Teenage Girl UV Problem
My daughters — and basically every teenage girl on the internet right now — are obsessed with the UV index. They watch it like a stock ticker. They wait for it to climb. Higher UV = faster tan = more efficient beach session, in their math.
But I think they’re missing the point that almost all of modern health misses when we chase intensity:
More isn’t always better. The question is the minimum effective dose.
Here’s the part most people don’t know: your body actually caps how much vitamin D it can make from sunlight in a single session. Once you hit the limit, more sun doesn’t equal more vitamin D — it just equals more UV damage. The sun is a fixed-portion meal, not an open bar.
So yes, a UV of 9 will crisp you golden brown faster. It’ll also fry your skin, age you, and trade your tomorrow for your today. A UV of 5 will still give you your vitamin D, still give you a beautiful gradual color, and still let you spend quality time outdoors with the sun on your body — without the damage.
Same logic applies everywhere in fitness and nutrition:
You don’t need to run a marathon to be cardiovascularly healthy.
You don’t need to lift 500 pounds to be strong.
You don’t need to eat zero carbs to be lean.
You don’t need a UV of 9 to get a tan.
Find the dose that works. Stop chasing the dose that hurts.
What That Looked Like Today
I lived this today at Life Time. Trained outside. Here’s the session:
Pool work: Jump squats, lunges, sumo squat jumps — exploding out of the water to use it as resistance. Way harder than it looks.
Breath work: Swam laps, then practiced underwater swimming holding my breath. Natural CO₂ tolerance training.
Resistance: Pool tools — push and pull through the water to load every movement.
Recovery: Hot tub, stretched everything out, loosened up.
The finisher: Laid out and got my 15 minutes in the sun.
A complete session — Movement, Recovery, and Nutrition (yes, sunlight is a nutrient) — built around the simple, elemental inputs that are right there waiting.
The Takeaway
Get outside. Move. Get in the water. Stretch. Get your 15 minutes.
Don’t chase the maximum. Hit the minimum effective dose.
Be strong to be useful.
Coach Mike Ockrim, CSCS, is the Founder & CEO of Mighty Oak Athletic, a youth strength & conditioning facility in Westmont, IL, and the Founder of Sunday Funday Sports, a nonprofit youth sports league. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and a Life Time group fitness instructor with over eight years on the platform. He is the author of Death Resistant, 13 Pounds in 30 Days, and Mighty Oak Athletic Nutrition.
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About 10–15 minutes of midday sun on bare arms and legs is enough for fair-to-medium skin types when the UV index is 3 or higher.
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At least 3. Below that, your skin cannot produce meaningful vitamin D. A UV of 5 is more than enough — you don't need extreme UV.
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No. Your body caps how much vitamin D it can make in a single session. Once you hit the ceiling, extra sun is just damage.
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UV 9 tans faster but damages faster. UV 5 produces the same tan with far less damage if you allow more days. Minimum effective dose wins.
They Walked In Soft. They Left Strong.
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E85 - They Walked In Soft - They Left Strong
We are trying to put ourselves out of business with every kid who walks through our doors. That is the whole point.
May is graduation season. Caps and gowns. Class pictures. Last days of school. At Mighty Oak Athletic, May also means some of our athletes are moving on. Some are graduating grade school into high school. Some are heading from high school into college, into university rec centers, college athletic programs, or wherever life takes them next. That is a great thing. The goal was never to keep them here forever. The goal was to send them out ready.
Many of them walked in soft. They left strong.
The First Day vs. The Last Day
Picture the same kid, two years apart.
Day one. The kid walks in behind a parent. Stands close. Stares at the floor when introductions happen. We ask for a squat. They bend at the knees, tip forward, and look at us for approval halfway down. We hand them an empty barbell. They hold it like it might bite. They say “I don’t know” to almost every question.
Day three hundred. The kid walks in alone. Says hi to the coaches by name. Grabs their own warm-up plate. A newer athlete is setting up a deadlift with bad form three feet away. Without being asked, the kid walks over and says, “Hey, try pulling the slack out before you lift. Like this.” Then they go back to their own bar.
That is the whole job.
Strength Is a Skill
Strength is not random. It is a skill, and skills are learned. A proper squat teaches patience and control. A deadlift teaches a kid how to use their hips, brace their core, and respect the weight in front of them. A push-up teaches body control. A pull-up teaches persistence. A carry teaches posture, grip, and toughness. The biggest lesson is that progress does not happen because a kid feels motivated one day. It happens because they show up consistently. That lesson follows them far beyond our gym.
You Have Not Learned It Until You Can Teach It
This is the part most strength programs miss. A kid has not really learned how to lift until they can guide someone else through it.
When a Mighty Oak Athletic graduate walks into a high school weight room, we want them to know how to set up their own squat. But we also want them to spot the freshman who has the bar resting on the back of their neck instead of their traps. We want them to say something. We want them to help.
That is what “be strong to be useful” actually looks like at age fifteen. Not lifting the heaviest weight in the room. Knowing enough to make the room safer. Knowing enough to lead.
That is the graduation we are really training for.
Graduation Is the Point
As parents, we sometimes want to hold on. We find a place that helps our kids and we want them to stay forever. But good coaching leads to independence. If a kid leaves us and walks into high school moving better, lifting smarter, and training with more confidence, that is a success. If they leave us and keep training for the rest of their lives, that is the biggest success.
The real goal is not a stronger middle school athlete. The real goal is a young adult who understands that strength is part of a healthy, active life — and who can help the people around them get there too.
We are proud of the ones moving on. We saw the first nervous session. We saw the awkward squats become clean ones. We saw the kid who used to stare at the floor start coaching the new kid.
You walked in soft. You left strong. Now go make the next room stronger too.
Your Grandma Falls. Their Grandma Lifts. The Difference Started at Age 9.
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E84 - Your Grandma Falls. Their Grandma Lifts. The Difference Started at Age 9.
There’s a video from Taiwan making the rounds. Two grandmothers, ages 89 and 91, walk into a gym. They don’t sit on the bench and watch. They train. They lift weights. They move like people who plan to be around for a while.
The Associated Press filmed it in Taipei this month. Taiwan just crossed into “super-aged” territory — a fifth of its people are now 65 or older — and these two are the face of the country’s response. Don’t decay. Don’t accept it. Pick up something heavy. Put it down. Repeat.
Here’s why a strength coach in Westmont is writing about grandmothers in Taipei: what they’re proving on that gym floor is the same thing we’re trying to bake into your kid right now.
Zoom out for a second. Most people think the human body is on a slow slide after age 30, and there’s nothing you can do but wave goodbye to it. The science says otherwise. Adults lose roughly 3 to 5 percent of their muscle every decade after 30, and the rate accelerates after 60. That condition is called sarcopenia , and it’s the quiet reason one in three adults over 65 falls every year . The falls are what put grandmas in nursing homes. The falls are what take dads off their feet for good.
But here’s the part that should make every parent sit up. Strength training doesn’t just slow that slide — it reverses it. UCLA Health summarized a study that followed more than 200,000 older adults for 15 years and found that any weight training — any — was tied to lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and all other causes . According to the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, older adults in strength training programs reduce their fall risk by up to 40 percent . Researchers have even shown that nursing home residents in their 90s can significantly improve strength in a matter of weeks of resistance training . The body does not stop responding. It just stops being asked.
Now zoom back in to your kid.
If a 91-year-old can wake up muscle that’s been asleep for half a century, imagine what your 9-year-old’s body does when you give it a barbell, a kettlebell, and a coach who knows what to do with both. We’re not building 9-year-olds into bodybuilders. We’re building habits and a nervous system. We’re teaching her how to brace her core, hinge from her hips, breathe under load, and stand back up when something heavy is in her hands. Those are the same movements that 91-year-old grandma in Taipei is using to stay upright, stay independent, and stay out of a hospital bed.
This is the whole Death Resistant idea behind Mighty Oak Athletic. We coach in three concentric circles: Recovery, then Movement, then Nutrition. Recovery is the ground — sleep, water, breathing, time. Movement is what we do every session — barbell, kettlebell, bodyweight, in patterns the human body was built for. Nutrition is the fuel that lets the work stick. Pull any one of those circles out and the whole thing wobbles. Stack them for 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, and you get the grandma in Taipei. Not by accident. By practice.
Be strong to be useful. That’s our line. A useful 12-year-old can carry her own groceries and protect her own knees on the soccer field. A useful 30-year-old can pick up his toddler without throwing his back out. A useful 89-year-old can squat down to the floor to play with her great-grandkids and stand back up without help. That’s not three different people. That’s the same person, lifting the same patterns, for 80 years.
The grandmas in Taiwan didn’t suddenly become strong at 89. They became strong by treating their bodies like they were going to need them for a long time — and then they did. Your kid has a 70-year head start on them. We just need to put a barbell in her hands and a coach next to her, and teach her the long game.
That’s the whole job at MOA. Plant the acorn. Coach the patterns. Run the play in decades, not weeks. The mighty oak shows up later.
Born Strong, Raised Soft: The Toddler Screen Crisis No One’s Talking About
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E83 - Born Strong, Raised Soft: The Toddler Screen Crisis No One’s Talking About
Two-thirds of British babies under two are using screens. Some up to eight hours a day.
Read that again.
Eight hours. On a child who hasn’t learned to walk steady. Whose brain is wiring itself for life. Whose hips, shoulders, and spine are still figuring out what gravity even is.
This isn’t a British problem. American parents aren’t doing better. We’re just less honest about it. Walk into any restaurant in DuPage County and count the toddlers with a phone propped on the table. The screen has replaced the rattle, the picture book, the older sibling, the grandparent.
It is the new pacifier.
What screens steal
A toddler’s job is to move. That’s it. Crawl, climb, grab, drop, fall, get up. Every wobble teaches their inner ear. Every reach builds their grip. Every fall — the small ones — teaches them how to fall safer next time.
Movement isn’t a hobby for a one-year-old. It’s the operating system getting installed.
When you replace movement with a screen, you don’t just lose the activity. You lose the wiring. The eyes never learn to track distance. The neck stays weak from looking down. The fingers learn to swipe before they learn to grip.
We see the result years later at MOA. Eight-year-olds who can’t hang from a bar for ten seconds. Ten-year-olds who can’t skip. Twelve-year-olds whose first deep squat looks like a folding chair collapsing.
These aren’t lazy kids. They’re under-built kids. The construction got skipped.
The other half of the bill
The body is one cost. The brain is the other.
When a baby touches a real ball, a hundred systems light up. Texture, temperature, weight, smell, the sound it makes when it hits the floor. When that same baby taps a glowing ball on a screen, one system lights up: the eyes.
Brains develop the parts they use. The parts they don’t use shrink.
We’re now raising a generation whose hands haven’t done the work their grandparents’ hands had done by age two. The data is starting to show up. Speech delays climbing. Attention spans shortening. Anxiety in elementary schoolers at the highest level on record.
Not all of it is screens. A lot of it is.
What to do
You don’t need to throw the iPad in the lake. You need to flip the ratio.
For every hour of screen time under age five, your kid should get two hours of unstructured movement. Outdoor if possible. Barefoot if possible. With other kids if possible. Boring if possible — boredom is where imagination starts.
A few rules that actually work:
No screens at meals. Ever. The dinner table is where language gets built.
No screens in the stroller. Let them watch the world.
No screens in the car for short trips. Eyes out the window beats eyes on glass.
And the big one — model it. Your toddler is watching how much you stare at your phone. They will copy what they see, not what you say.
Strong from the start
At MOA we train kids from age six. By the time they walk in our door, the foundation is already half-poured. The kids who move well were moved well. The kids who struggle were sat down too early, too often, for too long.
You can’t out-train a toddlerhood spent on a couch. You can repair some of it. We do that work every day. But it’s harder, and slower, and the kid pays for it twice.
The cheapest insurance you can buy your child is a yard, a pair of shoes, and a parent willing to be bored alongside them.
Put the phone down. Get on the floor. Roll the ball.
That’s the workout that matters most. And the only window for it is right now.
A Letter to My Heartbroken Son
Tonight, for the first time in his life, my son is truly heartbroken.
I've watched him lose a lot of games. Frustration, anger, even tears — I've seen them all. But those were the raw emotions of a competitor who came up short. Tonight was different. Tonight his heart was hurt. He was shocked. And in the quiet moment after, he asked me a question I won't forget.
To understand the weight of it, you have to know a little about Nicholas.
He has grown up on smaller teams in bigger leagues. From Little League through high school, every program he played for seemed to be the underdog in the bracket — the smaller school, the smaller roster, running into the bigger, better-funded squad. Year after year, he walked off the field on the wrong end of the scoreboard.
What was hard to watch wasn't the losing. It was watching him do everything right and still come up short.
Nick has always been the kid who buys in. He's coachable. Yes, Coach. No problem, Coach. Whatever you need, Coach. He puts in the off-season work most kids skip. He puts the team first. He keeps doing it all — even when the wins don't come.
This year was supposed to be different.
He chose volleyball at a junior college with a real shot at a national title. He bypassed other athletic and academic options to be there. He went to summer school early so he could join the team on time. He skipped the parties his friends were going to. He put in the extra workouts and the extra practices. He bought all the way in.
And it worked. The team lost only two matches all season. Heading into the national tournament, they were the number one seed. Every other team in the final eight had either lost to them, or lost to someone they'd beaten. The trophy felt close enough to touch.
Then, in the semifinals, it all fell apart. The five-seed beat them. And they earned it — they played well, they exploited the weak spots, they took the match. No bad calls. No excuses. Just a better team on a better day.
When the dust settled and Nick and I had a quiet moment, he opened up. Not with self-pity. With confusion.
I did everything right. I went to summer school. I did the extra work. I skipped the things my friends were doing. I prepared for this exact moment. So what was it all for?
That's the question. And every man eventually has to answer it.
So before he went to bed, I sent him this:
I know it's easy to be philosophical when I'm not going through it. I've been through tough times, though.
I've put in the effort, did the hard work, made the right choices and the sacrifices — and still lost.
I've also had the good fortune to experience success and victory. The winning was sweet. It felt good.
But the losing. The hard times. The moments when I gave it everything I had and it still wasn't enough — that's when I learned the most.
Those were the experiences that made me a better man. It doesn't mean we should be satisfied with losing or okay with being just okay.
It means there is value in the losing, and that the effort and the sacrifice weren't wasted.
More importantly, it's how we respond to the adversity that defines who we are as men. Our true character comes out when times are toughest.
Show the coaches, show the team, and show yourself who you are. The man you are becoming.
Show up tomorrow and play like an All-American. Play like it does matter. Play like it's the championship match. Give it your all and be the best man you can be.
I love you and look forward to seeing you finish the season strong.
Now turn off the video games and get some rest. You need it, Champ!
Love you
Tomorrow's match is the consolation game. Third place, no trophy, no banner. On paper, it doesn't matter.
But it does matter. It matters because losing is the test no win can administer. The wins make us feel good. The losses make us into something. They show us — and the people watching — who we actually are when the easy story falls apart.
I'll be in the stands tomorrow. I'm not anxious about whether his team wins. I'm anxious about who walks onto that court. The boy who's defeated and going through the motions? Or the man who treats a consolation match like a championship?
That's what I'm going to see tomorrow. And in it, a glimpse of the man my son is becoming for the rest of his life.
If you've ever put in the work and still come up short — and if you're a man worth a damn, you have — you already know how this story ends. The trophy was never the point. It never is.
It's about who you become on the other side of the heartbreak.
The Fitness Lie That's Keeping You Weak (Stop Doing This)
Mighty Oak Athletic Podcast S3:E81 - The Fitness Idea That Quietly Beats Every Workout Plan
Most people think fitness is about looking fit.
It's not. The real goal is moving well. Everything else follows.
For most of human history, people had to move to survive. They crawled, walked, ran, climbed, carried, threw, caught, and defended themselves. Movement wasn't a hobby. It was life. The body responded by becoming strong, coordinated, and useful.
Today, we sit. A lot. We ride in cars, work at desks, relax on couches, sleep in beds. Then we try to fix it with an hour at the gym and wonder why we still feel stiff and tired.
The body wasn't built for that. It was built to move often, in lots of different ways. It was built to play.
A body that works well usually looks great, too
Chase function and appearance takes care of itself. Strong legs, a solid trunk, mobile hips, healthy shoulders, and balanced movement patterns build an athletic body naturally. Nothing forced.
That body also feels better. It gets down to the floor and back up without thinking about it. It handles stairs, sports, yard work, and travel without pain. That's real fitness.
The Circles of Movement
At Mighty Oak Athletic, we think about health in circles. Six of them: Recovery, Nutrition, Mobility, Motion, Manipulation, and Self Defense.
Each one supports the others. When one is weak, the whole thing suffers. When they work together, the body becomes useful, durable, and ready for anything.
Here's how they break down.
Recovery. You can't move well if you never recover. Sleep is where the body rebuilds, the brain resets, and hormones regulate. Tired bodies move sloppy. Sloppy movement leads to injury. Recovery isn't lazy. It's productive.
Nutrition. Movement needs fuel. Underfed, overfed, or poorly fed bodies don't perform. Keep it simple. Eat real food. Eat the rainbow. Consistency beats perfection.
Mobility. If a joint can't move through a healthy range, the body cheats. Over time, that compensation creates pain and injury. Good hips mean better squats. Good shoulders mean better presses and reaches. Good ankles mean better running and landing. Mobility isn't flashy, but it unlocks everything else.
Motion. Stillness is the enemy. The less you move, the faster the body breaks down. Walk. Hike. Swim. Crawl. Climb. Play. Don't save all your movement for the gym. Live an active life.
Manipulation. This is strength in the real world. Lifting, carrying, throwing, catching, handling awkward loads. Can you pick something up off the floor? Carry it a long way? Put it overhead? That's useful strength. At MOA, we build it with barbells because nothing else loads the body as honestly. Strong legs, a strong trunk, and a strong backside make normal life feel easy.
Self Defense. Skipped too often in fitness conversations. Knowing how to protect yourself builds awareness, discipline, and quiet confidence. It's not about aggression. It's about being prepared, grounded, and hard to rattle.
Train like a human, not a machine
A lot of modern fitness disconnects the body from real life. People sit all day, then lock themselves into a machine that moves on one narrow path, then wonder why they still feel beat up.
The body was made to solve problems. Training should look like that.
Carry something heavy. Pull yourself up. Push off the floor. Squat deep. Throw a ball. Catch one. Sprint. Climb. Mix it up. Make it fun.
What this means for young athletes
Young athletes should train to move better, not just look stronger.
Build mobility so they can hit good positions. Build strength so they can produce and absorb force. Build coordination so they can react. Build broad athletic ability instead of narrow sport-specific habits.
The athlete who moves well performs better. Cuts better. Lands better. Handles contact better. Gets hurt less.
What this means for the rest of us
Adults need this too. Plenty of grown-ups are strong enough for the gym but not for life.
Real fitness shows up in small moments. Bending down without pain. Carrying luggage. Playing with your kids. Getting off the floor. Keeping your balance on a slippery sidewalk.
The older you get, the more movement equals freedom.
The bigger point
Movement isn't just exercise. It's a skill, a mindset, and a way of living.
Don't spend 23 hours parked and one hour trying to fix it. Live in motion. Train in ways that make life better.
Build a body that functions well and you don't just get a better body. You get a better life.
Be strong to be useful.
Get up. Walk. Carry. Climb. Crawl. Throw. Catch. Squat. Push. Pull.
Just move.
100 Fun and Easy Ideas to Live Actively as a Family
100 Ways to Live Actively as a Family: A Journey from Simple Steps to Big Adventures
Building an active lifestyle as a family is not just about incorporating exercise into your daily routine; it's about embracing a mindset of movement and connection that enriches your relationships, strengthens your bodies, and creates lasting memories. This journey begins with small steps, gradually evolving into bigger, more exciting adventures. Here's how you can embark on this path to live actively together as a family, nurturing not only your physical health but also your bond.
Start with a Spark: Simple Moves for Everyday Fun
Every great journey begins with a simple step. To start living actively as a family, you don’t need to jump into strenuous activities right away. Begin by integrating small, joyful movements into your daily routine. Start by (1) taking a stroll around your neighborhood. It’s a simple yet effective way to engage in light exercise while having meaningful conversations. Follow this with something fun like (2) dancing in the living room to your favorite tunes. Let each family member choose a song, and let loose to the beat.
Another easy way to add movement is to (3) stretch together in the morning or before bedtime. Simple stretches like reaching for the sky or touching your toes can enhance flexibility and prepare everyone for the day ahead or help wind down for the night. Or try (4) playing a game of catch in the backyard, a fun way to work on hand-eye coordination and enjoy some sunshine.
As you get comfortable with these smaller activities, consider (5) creating a family yoga routine with basic poses like child's pose or downward dog, or (6) setting up a mini obstacle course in your living room or backyard. Keep it simple—use pillows, chairs, or even the garden hose as your course materials. You could also turn your daily life into opportunities for movement by (7) doing a family plank challenge to see who can hold it the longest or by (8) marching in place during commercial breaks.
Transform Your Space: Make Your Home an Activity Playground
Once you’ve made movement a part of your daily routine, it's time to make your home more conducive to an active lifestyle. Transform ordinary spaces into opportunities for movement. Start by (9) turning the hallway into a runway, where everyone can strut like a supermodel or a superhero. Turn chores into challenges—(10) who can vacuum the fastest or (11) fold laundry the quickest?
Create a movement jar filled with ideas like (12) jumping jacks, squats, or even crab walks, and take turns picking from it. Make use of the stairs by (13) running up and down or trying step-ups, and (14) turn screen time into active time by following online workout videos together.
Consider (15) setting up a small corner in your home with a yoga mat, some resistance bands, and light weights to create a mini gym. Or (16) replace the living room chairs with exercise balls to encourage active sitting. Keep it fun by (17) having impromptu dance-offs or (18) trying indoor sports like mini-basketball or foam hockey.
Step Outside: Take Your Fun to the Great Outdoors
With your home now a hub of activity, take your movement outside to enjoy the fresh air and nature’s beauty. (19) Walk or bike to school or work when possible, or (20) make it a habit to explore local trails and parks on weekends. Plan a family picnic where you (21) play frisbee, soccer, or fly a kite. You can also introduce your family to new sports like (22) tennis or pickleball, or (23) plan a scavenger hunt at a local park to make outdoor movement even more engaging.
Create a (24) ‘Park Day’ where you visit several parks in one day or (25) organize a family relay race with fun activities like skipping, hopping, and crab walks. During winter, embrace the cold with activities like (26) building a snowman or (27) having a snowball fight.
For a creative twist, (28) engage in outdoor art projects using leaves, sticks, and stones or (29) plant a garden together to foster both movement and a deeper connection with nature.
All Together Now: Movement Fun with Family Elders
Living actively isn’t just for the younger members of the family. Involve grandparents and older family members to strengthen intergenerational bonds. Simple activities like (30) taking scenic walks and sharing stories can bring joy and exercise together. Gentle games like (31) bocce ball, horseshoes, or cornhole are excellent for engaging all ages, and (32) chair exercises offer a safe way for everyone to stay active.
Encourage (33) dancing to oldies music or (34) participate in light gardening tasks like planting flowers or picking vegetables. Attend community events that require some walking or (35) host an intergenerational game night with active games like charades or Twister. By including everyone, you enrich family time and promote wellness across generations.
Turn Chores into Cheers: Fun with Everyday Tasks
Look for opportunities to add movement to your daily chores. (36) Turn mundane tasks into fun challenges, like racing to finish vacuuming or folding laundry. (37) Make car-washing a team activity with a splash, and (38) rake leaves or shovel snow together while having fun. (39) Build a birdhouse or a garden box to encourage woodworking skills and creativity while staying active. Even (40) cooking dinner together can become an active time—chopping, mixing, and stirring all involve movement.
Get Moving Together: Join a Family Fitness Class
To keep the momentum going, consider (41) taking fitness classes together. Sign up for a (42) family yoga class or (43) join a family-friendly 5K run or walk. Try martial arts like (44) karate or taekwondo, or (45) attend a dance class like Zumba, hip-hop, or ballroom. (46) Participate in a family swim class offers low-impact exercise for all, and you can even (47) explore more adventurous activities like rock climbing or paddleboarding. Family fitness classes provide a structured environment to learn new skills while fostering teamwork and support.
Aim High: Train for a Common Goal
As you progress, set a common goal to train for together. (48) Prepare for a charity run or (49) learn to swim laps as a family. Challenge yourselves by (50) completing a hiking series or (51) planning a multi-day biking trip. (52) Set personal fitness goals for each member and check in regularly to celebrate milestones. Training together for events like (53) a triathlon or sports tournament builds resilience and a strong family spirit.
Seek Adventure: Make Big Outdoor Plans
When your family is ready for bigger adventures, plan more extensive outdoor activities. (54) Go on a weekend camping trip with hiking, swimming, and outdoor games, or (55) organize a family bike tour of your city or state. (56) Try geocaching to discover hidden treasures or (57) participate in a themed fun run like a color run or mud race. Take on new challenges like (58) surfing, skiing, or snowboarding as a family or (59) build a treehouse together.
Make It a Habit: Build a Lifestyle of Movement
To integrate movement into every aspect of life, (60) commit to regular activities. (61) Set monthly ‘move challenges’ where you try new sports, explore different parks, or engage in unique activities. (62) Encourage everyone to track their steps and celebrate reaching daily goals. (63) Join local sports clubs or community centers that offer family memberships and (64) participate in events like ‘No Car Days’ or community tournaments.
(65) Plan annual vacations that involve hiking, biking, or exploring, and (66) rotate activities regularly to keep everyone engaged and challenged. Finally, (67) set your sights on ultimate goals that require dedication, like (68) training for an endurance event, (69) attempting an indoor climb, or (70) planning a cross-country cycling trip.
Reach for the Stars: Ultimate Family Goals
To truly live as an active family, (76) live each day with a commitment to movement, health, and connection. (77) Embark on a fitness tour around the world, trying different sports and activities in each country. (78) Attempt a high-altitude climb such as Mount Kilimanjaro to challenge your strength and resilience as a family. (79) Take on an extended walking pilgrimage like the Camino de Santiago, experiencing different cultures and environments while staying active. (80) Plan a cross-country cycling trip, discovering new places together while keeping fit. (81) Participate in a family adventure race, combining multiple disciplines like running, cycling, and paddling.
(82) Set a Guinness World Record for a unique family activity, turning your journey into something extraordinary. (83) Train for a triathlon relay where each family member completes a different segment, fostering teamwork and mutual support. (84) Try a new adventure sport like paragliding or bungee jumping to add excitement to your active lifestyle. (85) Organize a fitness-themed vacation where your days are filled with hiking, snorkeling, or skiing. (86) Host a family sports tournament involving friends and neighbors, building community bonds along with family fitness. (87) Design a family obstacle race in your neighborhood or backyard, encouraging creativity and collaboration.
(88) Create a family fitness blog or vlog, documenting your active adventures and inspiring others. (89) Host regular active game nights with sports-based board games or virtual reality sports. (90) Participate in a community marathon or charity event to promote both fitness and philanthropy. (91) Encourage family members to become fitness ambassadors in their schools or workplaces. (92) Create a reward system for achieving fitness milestones, celebrating with fun activities like a movie night or a day trip. (93) Incorporate fitness challenges like "no elevator week" or "daily squat goals" into your daily life. (94) Plan a family fitness expo to share knowledge, gear, and fun activities with other families.
(95) Create a family movement mission statement that reflects your shared goals and values for health and fitness. (96) Explore new forms of exercise together like acro-yoga, circus skills, or dancing. (97) Host an annual family reunion with a fitness focus—relay races, tug-of-war, or fun runs. (98) Organize a fitness treasure hunt around your city or neighborhood, solving clues and completing challenges. (99) Participate in themed fitness events like Zombie Runs, Color Runs, or Warrior Dash events for a mix of fun and exercise. (100) Make movement a celebration—always find reasons to dance, play, and stay active together, no matter where life takes you.
By embracing these 100 ways to live actively, your family will build not only stronger bodies but also deeper bonds, creating a legacy of health, happiness, and togetherness. So lace up those sneakers, grab your loved ones, and take that first step toward a lifetime of active adventures—together.