Lucy Milgrim rubbed chalk on her palms and positioned her pink and blue high-tops on the gym floor. She bent her knees, pushed her hips back and took a few deep breaths. Then, when her dad said go, she braced and dead-lifted a 145-pound barbell.
Lucy is 10 years old and weighs 58 pounds.
“My fingers can finally touch!” she said, showing how her grip wrapped around the bar.
I joined Lucy and her parents, Michelle and Brett Milgrim, in their small garage gym on Long Island, to watch one of Lucy’s strength training workouts. Lucy, who is in fourth grade, complemented her lifting with pull-ups and ring dips that she completed with seemingly no effort. In between sets, she bopped around the equipment, telling stories about classmates who challenged her to lift them up at recess and her favorite hairstyle (battle braids).
Lucy started strength training when she was 8 years old, and she holds three American records in powerlifting. She is a champion wrestler, too.
She is also the star of Instagram and TikTok accounts run by her parents, which together have 232,000 followers. Her most popular Instagram video, in which she dead-lifted 180 pounds at a powerlifting meet, her personal record, has been viewed 3.7 million times.
She said she became interested in powerlifting after watching her parents work out in their home gym. She asked her dad, an attorney and wrestling coach, to train her. He was on board, knowing it could make her a stronger wrestler.
He’s never had to push her to train, or to attempt heavier lifts, he said. “Lucy just has always naturally been the type of kid that, when she says, I’m gonna do something, you better step aside,” Mr. Milgrim said.
The fact that these accounts have attracted large followings reflects both a recent rise in strength training among young people — and the reality that it’s still not yet mainstream, said Heather Faas, the executive director of USA Powerlifting. When people see “a kid lifting weights, and with good technique and form, it’s pretty mind-blowing,” she said.
A New Era for Youth Lifting
Until about 20 years ago, medical authorities advised children not to lift heavy weights. This was largely because of a misconception that it could stunt their development by damaging their growth plates, the weakest part of a bone, said Dr. Andrew Peterson, a professor of pediatrics and orthopedics at the University of Iowa.
“They took a real hard stance against it,” Dr. Peterson said. This position trickled down to youth coaches and gyms.
But research has shown that strength training can be both safe and beneficial for children, as long as they are old enough to follow directions, and closely supervised by a coach or trainer to guide them on proper form, technique and progression.
A 2020 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics enthusiastically recommended resistance training for children and adolescents not only to improve their health and fitness but also to prevent and recover from sports injuries.
“We’ve known it’s safe for quite some time now, but there were still some old school coaches that were a little resistant to getting younger kids into the weight room,” said Dr. Peterson, who was a co-author of the 2020 report. “I think people are starting to realize that it works,” making young athletes stronger and more resilient, he added.
Today, more kids are strength training. Hyrox, the popular fitness race that involves both running and strength exercises, recently started a youth division. When USA Powerlifting first created an event for children ages 8 to 13 in 2015, only 10 kids participated in the national competition. This year, 65 kids will be competing, and next year, the group plans to open up 120 spots to meet demand, Ms. Faas said.
Kids who share their feats of strength on social media are helping to “break the stigma” and show that it can be safe and fun, Ms. Faas said, as long as “the adults in charge are creating a safe environment.”
Pumping Iron With Their Parents
When Winter was an infant, her parents would plop her in a Pack ’n Play while they trained. But as she got older, she wanted to move her body alongside them and would try to imitate the exercises they were doing, they said. Before long, they ordered kid-size versions of the equipment they used. When her sister, Sky, became a toddler, she wanted to do whatever her big sister was doing.
Earlier this year, the sisters participated in a scaled-down version of the CrossFit Open, a competition held at CrossFit affiliates around the world. For 16 minutes straight, they did exercises including wall balls, box jumps and pull-ups. Their parents later posted a video of the event, which more than 40,000 people have liked.
Mr. and Mrs. Duboc said they started the sisters’ Instagram and TikTok accounts in part to convince other parents that they could bring their own children into the weight room with them — and could have fun doing it.
“It’s fun to feel strong because you’re, like, really small,” Winter told me over Zoom, wearing a black and pink Pikachu T-shirt. “And we feel good because we’re helping other people.” She also feels good when she lobs a ball so hard during tennis lessons that her coach ducks, she said.
Mr. Duboc says he often receives messages from parents about how to get their children involved. He also fields questions about whether the training is dangerous. He tries to answer as both a coach and a parent, stressing the importance of close supervision and of paying attention to how kids feel. “If they are not having a good time, there’s no point in forcing something that’s not there,” he said.
Navigating a New Landscape
Both the Milgrims and Dubocs said they took a cautious approach to their accounts, posting selectively and shielding their children from details like how many followers they have or how many likes a post racks up. “That’s very intentional,” said Ms. Milgrim, who is a dietitian.
Both families also said they would continue chronicling the training and accomplishments as long as their children’s relationship with it was healthy and positive — which to the parents means their kids won’t fixate on the accounts. (Neither Lucy nor the Duboc sisters have access to social media yet, nor a phone, and neither family plans to allow them until their children are teenagers.) The families said they were more or less playing things by ear and were prepared to close the accounts if they saw a negative effect on their children.
“As long as it stays fun, we’ll keep doing it,” Ms. Duboc said.
Mary Beth Finegan, a sports therapist in New York, has helped many young athletes and their parents manage social media accounts, which coaches of elite youth sports teams, university recruiters and even athletic brands now scour to find new talent. (Lucy’s parents said they initially created her account with college in mind.)
The accounts have already allowed for opportunities beyond the gym, too. Lucy is sponsored by a wrestling apparel brand, Combat X, and the Duboc sisters have a brand deal with the beverage company Jocko Fuel. In 2025, Sky appeared in a Super Bowl ad for Dove.
To help kids cultivate a healthy relationship with both their sport and social media, Ms. Finegan said, parents need to closely monitor how the accounts are affecting their children’s mental and emotional well-being and have an open dialogue about it. They should be willing to walk away if social media becomes a source of stress, she added.
Brie Scolaro, a therapist in New York who works with youth athletes, said that sharing children’s athletic achievements on social media wasn’t all good or all bad, but “if parents are seeing it take a toll on their kid, and they’re seeing that they are getting obsessive about posting or likes,” then that is a signal to consider taking a break.
Back in the Milgrim family’s garage gym, Lucy said one of her main powerlifting goals was to beat her 12-year-old brother, who recently bested her dead-lift record by a hair.
“He always brags that he can dead-lift more than me — by one pound,” she said, shrugging. Then she got back to work.
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