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One of the guys I know is a skinny, small kid. We were talking about strength training the other night and he said his High School coach told him he'll never get big, so he shouldn't bother lifting. At best, he was told, he can tone up a bit and get more endurance but he can't get strong.

Aaaargh!

That drives me completely nuts.

He's like 17. He's got at least another growth spurt in him. He seems willing to put in the effort if he knows what to do. I know from training with him he'll do whatever you tell him until you tell him to stop.

I thought that was a really terrible thing to say to a kid. Of course he can get bigger and stronger. He's short and narrow, so he's never going to be a huge guy. He won't be Andy Bolton. He's going to struggle with putting on mass. But he can absolutely get bigger. You can tell him it's going to be hard, he'll have to learn to squat a barbell and curl a fork 6x a day, but telling him he shouldn't start to train and can't succeed?

I can only hope the kid misheard this guy, and took "You can't get much bigger" as "You shouldn't train." But even if he heard wrong, you've got to be careful talking to young guys, especially skinny ones - it's really easy to get discourage. "We can get you bigger and stronger, but it'll be hard" is great, anything with "can't" is going to risk being taken as "so don't even bother."

I sent him my blog post about beginner training and told him to get Starting Strength or download Stronglifts and just start eating more food. He's too broke to get a coach but I told him to hunt around, maybe someone can work with him for little or nothing. Hopefully he'll get going on it. But man...he should be getting that kind of help from his high school sports coach, not from some guy he happens to know.

Aargh.

Rant over for now. I had to get that off my chest!

Yeah that is pretty aweful. Anyone can get bigger and stronger.

PS.) Ever if he is skinny, that doesn't neccissarily mean he's a hardgainer. Have you ever seen pictures of Lou Feregno before he started lifting?

I think this kid will stay pretty small, he's like 80# lighter than me and short. But he can certainly get bigger and stronger.

I've never seen young Lou, got any good pictures? I'll send them to him. :)

Don't have any ... but I know they showed some in Pumping Iron. Hard to believe, but Lou was too skinny to make the football team in high school.

Franco Columbo was also pretty skinny when he was young. He was a shepherd in Sardenia (seriously).

I knew about Franco...he was like a bantamweight boxer, too.

There really is a lot of inspiration out there for him. He took the first step in asking me for "anything" to help him. We'll see if he takes the next step of actually picking up a fork and and weights!

That is ridiculous. Everyone starts off from humble beginnings. I do think its sort of messed up that typically people who can put on weight easily (me) bitch about it alot and skinny guys bitch about not being able to do it. Of course, looking at this country (if your from America), its probably better that you don't put on mass easily...

I really agreed with your point,Pdellorto.

20 months ago, i was so skinny that i weighted 72kg in 190cm.
But thanks for everyone warm advises and encouragement,
i have reached 82kg with a mass.
sometimes the words could kill people so brutally,but if we have strong ambition of body transformetion, we can certainly acquire it.