One of the biggest myths in youth football is that building muscle will make players slower on the pitch. The reality? When done correctly, gaining lean mass enhances performance, making players stronger, faster, and more powerful. The key is understanding how to build functional muscle—the type that translates into explosive actions on the field—and how to balance this with speed, stamina, and mobility work throughout the year.
It's important to understand that not all strength training leads to increased muscle mass. In fact, hypertrophy—the process of building muscle size—requires a specific combination of training variables such as volume, intensity, and adequate recovery, alongside sufficient calorie intake.
Strength training can target different adaptations, such as improving neural efficiency (the brain’s ability to recruit more muscle fibres) or increasing muscle-tendon stiffness for better force transfer, without significantly increasing muscle size. Many footballers and parents mistakenly believe that any form of strength training can make them or their child bulky, but that’s not the case.
Hypertrophy training requires a consistent muscle growth stimulus over time, and it’s also particularly challenging for youth footballers to achieve due to the high energy demands from matches and training, combined with a commonly insufficient calorie intake to support additional muscle growth. This is why football-specific strength programmes often prioritise relative strength and power over pure muscle size—ensuring players become stronger and faster without unnecessary bulk.
Girls VS Boys
Muscle growth in youth footballers is heavily influenced by hormonal changes during puberty. For most boys, testosterone levels begin to rise significantly between the ages of 11 and 15, depending on when they enter puberty. Testosterone is a key hormone that supports muscle protein synthesis, which is essential for building muscle mass, for this reason significant hypertrophy is unlikely before puberty due to low testosterone levels.
Before this hormonal shift, hypertrophy training alone will not produce the same results as it would in older athletes. Instead, younger players primarily gain strength through neuromuscular adaptations, such as improved coordination, balance, and movement efficiency, rather than increased muscle size. However, once testosterone levels rise during adolescence, muscle growth potential increases dramatically, making the mid-teen years a key period for hypertrophy training to become more effective.
For girls, oestrogen levels rise during puberty, typically between 8 and 13 years old, which influences body composition differently. While girls do not experience the same surge in testosterone as boys, they can still develop muscle strength and endurance effectively through resistance training. Strength training for girls helps improve muscle tone, joint stability, and injury resilience, particularly around areas prone to injury like the knees and hips. It’s important to note that hypertrophy training is still beneficial for girls, but the muscle mass gains are typically less pronounced due to lower testosterone levels.
Why Muscle Growth Won’t Slow You Down (If Done Correctly)
The misconception that muscle growth makes players slower usually stems from observing traditional gym-goers or bodybuilders who train solely for aesthetics. In football, however, the focus should be on functional hypertrophy—building muscle that can produce force quickly and maintain power output across repeated efforts.
Strength and power are closely linked to muscle size. A larger muscle has a greater cross-sectional area, which increases its ability to generate force. This is essential for accelerating, decelerating, jumping, changing direction, and holding off opponents—all critical components of football performance.
What slows players down isn’t muscle growth itself but imbalanced training. If hypertrophy training isn’t paired with speed, power, and movement mechanics work, players risk becoming strong but sluggish. Football requires explosive muscle—not just big muscles. The solution? Combine hypertrophy training with explosive, power-based exercises to ensure muscle mass is functional and reactive.
In simple terms, this means that even when lifting heavier weights during hypertrophy phases, the intention should always be to move with speed. Training the nervous system to fire quickly, even during slower movements, helping to ensure players remain explosive.
Why the Off-Season Is the Perfect Time to Build Muscle
Hypertrophy training should be periodised to fit into the football calendar. The off-season is the optimal time to focus on the more traditional muscle growth training strategies, because players don’t have the immediate demands of matches and can better manage fatigue and delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). This makes it the ideal window to build a new foundation of strength and power that will carry through the season.
A typical hypertrophy programme involves moderate-to-heavy loads with higher reps (8-12 per set) to induce microtears in the muscle fibres. These tears repair and grow stronger with the right recovery and nutrition. Interestingly, many professional players start the season looking more muscular. This is because the off-season allows them to focus more on hypertrophy and maximal strength development. However, as the season progresses, their muscle mass reduces slightly as the focus shifts toward power maintenance and match freshness.
It’s Hard for Footballers to Gain Significant Muscle Mass
Unlike bodybuilders, footballers aren’t in the gym for hours every day solely focusing on hypertrophy. Most of their time is spent on technical training, tactical work, and matches. This limits their opportunity to dedicate time to hypertrophy-focused sessions.
Additionally, football’s calorie demands often make it difficult for players to hit maintenance calories, let alone a surplus. Frequent training sessions and matches can suppress appetite, and without the right nutritional strategy, players may struggle to eat enough to support muscle growth.
For youth footballers, the challenge is even greater. Many players underestimate the importance of diet in unlocking muscle growth. It’s essential to consume adequate protein, carbohydrates, and overall calories to support hypertrophy, which again highlights why the concern surrounding a footballer potentially "getting too big" from strength training is likely unnecessary in most cases.
Different Approaches to Hypertrophy Training
In terms of the training, there are multiple training strategies to achieve muscle growth, and understanding the differences can help footballers apply the right methods at the right time of year to maximise performance without compromising speed and agility.
Below are some of the most effective approaches to hypertrophy training, along with their pros, cons, and best applications for youth footballers.
1. Traditional Hypertrophy Training (Moderate Loads, Higher Volume)
The classic hypertrophy approach involves lifting moderate-to-heavy loads for 8-12 repetitions per set, with short rest periods between sets (typically 30-90 seconds). This method creates the mechanical tension and muscle damage needed to trigger muscle growth.
Benefits: Proven to increase muscle size, builds a solid foundation for future strength and power gains, easy to periodise during the off-season when there are fewer performance demands.
Challenges: Causes significant fatigue and soreness (DOMS), making it less practical in-season, can result in non-functional hypertrophy (muscle size without matching improvements in strength or power) if not combined with power-based exercises.
When to Use: Off-season as players have more time to recover from soreness without impacting match performance.
2. Power-Conditioned Hypertrophy (Explosive Movements Combined with Weights)
One way to avoid the risk of non-functional hypertrophy is to combine traditional hypertrophy work with power-based exercises to ensure the muscle adaptations remain explosive and functional for football.
For example, pair heavy squats or deadlifts with box jumps, plyometric push-ups, or medicine ball throws. This method helps condition the newly built muscle to maintain its fast-twitch, explosive properties.
Benefits: Maintains and enhances explosive power alongside hypertrophy, reduces the risk of players becoming “bulky but slow”, enhances rate of force development (RFD), improving sprint performance and agility.
Challenges: Requires careful planning to avoid overloading players, must be performed with excellent movement mechanics to reduce injury risk.
When to Use: Throughout the year, but especially in preseason.
3. Functional Hypertrophy from Sport-Specific Actions
Another approach is to focus on hypertrophy that occurs naturally from football-specific movements over time. Repeated explosive efforts during training and matches can cause muscle growth in the areas most relevant to performance, such as the hamstrings, quads, glutes, and core.
Benefits: Highly specific to football movements, improves muscle adaptation to matchplay demands, less risk of non-functional mass as it directly translates to on-pitch performance.
Challenges: Takes longer to accumulate muscle mass compared to traditional hypertrophy training, may require supplemental weight training to maximise results.
When to Use: In-season and preseason, when players are already engaging in frequent high-intensity football activities or aren't yet ready for heavy lifting.
4. Strength-Focused Hypertrophy (Lower Reps, Heavier Loads)
Although traditional hypertrophy focuses on moderate loads, a strength-focused approach can also lead to muscle growth when performed with higher loads (75-85% of 1RM) and lower repetitions (4-6 reps). This method stimulates both muscle size and maximal strength.
Benefits: Increases muscle density along with size, builds relative strength (strength-to-weight ratio), which is key for footballers, reduces the risk of gaining non-functional mass.
Challenges: Can be fatiguing, making it more suited to off-season or preseason, requires perfect form to avoid injury when lifting heavy.
When to Use: Off-season and early preseason to maximise both hypertrophy and strength.
5. Time Under Tension (TUT) Training
Time Under Tension refers to the total duration a muscle is under strain during a set. Slowing down the eccentric phase (the lowering part of a lift) increases muscle fibre recruitment and metabolic stress, which are key drivers of hypertrophy.
Benefits: Can be done with lighter loads, reducing injury risk, improves muscle control and stability, great for youth players who are still mastering movement mechanics.
Challenges: Can cause significant soreness (DOMS), requires mental focus to maintain proper form.
When to Use: In-season or off-season when heavier lifting may not be practical, for youth players as a progression before moving to heavier loads.
Why Ice Baths Should Be Avoided
One final important point, muscle growth happens during recovery, not during the workout. Some players who are training hard in the off-season will incorporate ice baths in an effort to manage soreness and be able to train hard day after day. However, when it comes to muscle hypertrophy, ice baths can actually blunt the adaptations needed for muscle growth.
As discussed, muscle hypertrophy occurs when microtears in the muscle fibres from resistance training stimulate a repair process, leading to increased muscle size and strength. This repair process is driven by inflammatory responses that signal the body to rebuild and strengthen the muscles. When you use an ice bath post-training, you reduce this inflammatory response, which limits the signalling pathways that trigger hypertrophy.
Research has shown that cold-water immersion immediately after strength training can decrease muscle protein synthesis rates, which are essential for muscle repair and growth. Essentially, by cooling the muscles too quickly, you're interrupting the natural recovery and adaptation process that leads to long-term strength and size gains.
Therefore during the off-season, if the goal is to maximise hypertrophy, players should avoid ice baths after hypertrophy-focused sessions. Instead, they should rely on active recovery methods, such as light stretching, mobility exercises, and low-intensity activities to promote blood flow and recovery without dampening the muscle-building process.
Ice baths still have their place, particularly during the season when recovery between matches is the priority. But in the off-season, the focus should be on maximising muscle adaptation, not immediately reducing soreness.
The Long-Term Approach
Muscle growth doesn’t happen overnight. It takes consistent training, proper nutrition, and recovery over months or even years, which is why it makes sense to incorporate a variety of strategies over a season. The off-season provides the best window for dedicated hypertrophy work, but players must remember to stay consistent throughout the year, long-term consistency always trumps short-term intensity.
By following a structured plan that incorporates all phases of hypertrophy, strength, power, and speed, players can build a well-rounded athletic base that supports high performance on the pitch without compromising agility.
If you have a son or daughter 9-18 who is aiming for elite level, and you to help them benefit from a tailored plan which incorporates everything discussed above and they can follow from home, click the image below.
References:
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Moran, J., Sandercock, G. R., Ramirez-Campillo, R., Meylan, C., Collison, J., & Parry, D. A. (2017). "A meta-analysis of resistance training in prepubertal children: The importance of sample size." Pediatric Exercise Science, 29(4), 466-475.
Great information, specially for a parent of an 11 year old wanting more strength