How these guides are written and kept accurate

A health topic about young people

Strength training for teenagers touches on health, growth and the safety of minors, so mistakes matter more than on most subjects. Every page carries a notice that the content is general information and not medical advice, and points readers to a doctor or other qualified health professional for anything about their own health.

Sources

Guides are based only on authoritative sources: U.S. government health and regulatory bodies (the CDC, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture), the National Institutes of Health and its MedlinePlus service, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, and professional bodies' published position statements, such as that of the National Strength and Conditioning Association. Blogs, product makers, retailers, influencers and forums are not used as the basis for any statement.

Each guide lists its sources at the end and shows the date it was last reviewed against them. Where sources are silent or unclear, the guides say so rather than filling the gap.

How sources were checked

On 2026-10-22, each cited document was requested once and, where the publisher returned its text, the guides were checked against that text. Three documents could not be retrieved automatically because the publisher served a bot check: the American Academy of Pediatrics clinical reports "Resistance Training for Children and Adolescents" and "Use of Performance-Enhancing Substances", and the National Strength and Conditioning Association statement "Youth Resistance Training: Updated Position Statement Paper". Statements based on those three reflect the published documents as the author understood them, and a check against their full text is still to be done. Where possible, the same points are also supported by an AAP page for parents that was retrieved and checked.

Writing

• Plain language that a teenager can follow, with terms explained the first time they appear.
• Source material is paraphrased, not copied.
• Worked examples are invented to illustrate a point. They describe no real person, family, gym or product, and are labelled as examples.
• The focus is strength, health and sport. The guides avoid language about changing appearance quickly and do not compare bodies.

What the guides do not say

The guides do not recommend any supplement, product or brand, and say plainly that supplements and performance-enhancing drugs are not recommended for teens, as the cited bodies say. They give no training programmes with weights, sets, repetitions or percentages, no doses, no diets or calorie targets, and no diagnosis or treatment. They do not tell anyone to start, stop or change a medicine. Decisions like these belong with a qualified professional who knows the person.

Links

In this first edition, cited documents are named but not linked, so that every page can be reviewed before any outbound link is added. Any links added later will go only to pages that help the reader. The site does not carry paid, sponsored or affiliate links.

Updates and corrections

Guides will be re-checked when their sources change. A correction that changes the meaning of a guide will be noted at the end of that guide with the date. There is no contact route yet, so corrections currently come from that periodic re-checking rather than from reader reports.

Use of AI

The guides were drafted with an AI system from the cited documents. They have not yet had an independent human editorial review or a review by a health professional. The about page describes how the site was made.