My oldest son is virtually my clone, build wise but 3" taller and he was a 28" waist by the age of 10! He also had ZERO excess body fat (excess body fat, I know ZERO body fat equals instant death) as that kid was CONSTANTLY banging out push-ups (taught himself how to do one handed "jump" push-ups when he was 9 or 10 watching you tube!) and sit-ups (pull-ups as well) AND running a minimum of 2 miles every damn day including AFTER football or wrestling practice and on some days both! We'd hold summer work-outs for the wrestlers (I was a coach for the school) and anybody was welcome as it wasn't "just" wrestling. Older kids would be lifting, (younger kids too but only with dumbbells), we'd hold half hour deaths sessions (OK, I ran these) where I'd start the clock and every 45 seconds we'd change the exercise from sprints, skipping/cherry pickers, taking shots with your right, then left, then right, jogs, walking hand stands (not everyone can do these, kids who couldn't do these sprinted) but there was not 5 seconds of break in that entire half hour. IF you couldn't do whatever and needed a break, you jogged. That was the break! These kids who put the work in were in unbelievable shape, were ripped to shreds, had stamina out the ass etc. My oldest began doing these thigs when he was 8 but was working his ass off long before that. Until he INSISTED on participating no one younger than 7th grade was brought to these sessions but he started a wave that lasted 4 or 5 years where we had a lot of elementary kids there as well. SADLY that died just as fast as it began. Just goes to the type of kids we had.
I remember him asking me what he could do to get quicker off the ball in football the 1st year he played and he was still 4 at the time (weeks within his 5th birthday) so I told him to get in a stance, face up the steepest hill he could find, explode out of the stance and sprint for 5 yards, reset, do it again. I'd simulate the snap of a football (with a football) and in his first game, playing against kids who were as much as 3 full years older than him, he forced a slew of fumbles, made over a dozen tackles for loss and scored a TD when he took the handoff meant for the RB 60 yards the other way. I was grinning from ear to ear! Yes, I coached him, but NEVER during practice as I believe that as a coach your job is to coach every single player and most of that focus goes towards the players who maybe aren't as gifted or skilled. When you do that, you have a team no one is going to dominate by the middle/late season. Besides, I DETEST "daddy ball" where the coach is only there so that his son or daughter is the star.
Like me, he had to struggle his last 2 years of HS to wrestle 195 (it was 189 when I wrestled, 195 would had been much easier for me) and he looked like a body builder. Unfortunately for him he wrestled in perhaps the most brutal district in the US, PA's DIII with 79 schools and 1st, 2nd & 4th place in the State came out of his district his Sr season and all 3 who advanced from DIII placed 8th or better in the state the entire time he was a varsity wrestler (9-12th grades) so he would have had to knock one of those kids off just to make it to states. He came REAL close, losing in the ultimate ride-out 3 years in a row, just missing out of that goal, to place in the state. Unfortunately for him he wound up in the bigger schools in the best district. I had many kids I helped coach make it to states, but they all did so in a smaller school classification where there is nowhere near the same level of competition. I'm not saying that a kid from a smaller school can't be the best in the state, it's just a rarity. The other thing that hurt him was his height. He peaked at a shade under 5' 11". James Franklin (PSU head coach) told him, to his face, "IF YOU WERE JUST 2" TALLER"! He won the lifting competition @ PSU as a Sophomore against kids damn near twice his size and repeated again as a Jr, lost to an ANIMAL his Sr season by 15lbs. That "animal" IS currently in the NFL and is quite well known.
My younger guy is WAY bigger as today he's a shade better than 6'3" (I keep telling him he is the mailman's kid LOL) and MASSIVE. He's right around 270 and yeah he could stand to lose 10lbs but the numbers he's putting up in the gym took me until I was well into my late 20s to reach and he's going to blow my personal best out of the water long before he sees 33 which is how old I was when I set all of my personal best marks. Wrestling wise? He was a Lt HWT as a frigging Freshman (he weighed 210) and weighed 245-250 as a Sr. He'd added several inches to his chest, more than an inch to his neck, several inches to his biceps, forearms, quads & calves since then. He turned 22 last summer. My oldest 25 at the end of last summer.
So yeah....small doesn't run in my family LOL. I can't imagine being able to fit into the diapers I see people talking about as they wouldn't have fit me since I was 7 or so.
CptKirk
