How much were you lifting when you were in training as a teenager? Probably not this much.
Morgan Nicholls is a 13-year-old gymgoer, but that hasn’t stopped him from setting some impressive PRs in the gym that would intimidate any adult man. Morgan Nicholls also frequently posts updates to his Instagram page so that we mere mortals can follow along with his fitness progress. Take a look at some of his progress shots and training videos and compare where you were at age 13:
Is it safe for a 13-year-old to work out like this? Experts say yes, as long as proper precautions are followed. There’s always some danger that viral athletic kids who workout are permanently damaging their bodies, but that’s really only true if they take performance-enhancing drugs or result to other unnatural methods to boost performance. It looks like Morgan Nicholls is all natural and his achievements are his own.
Being 13 and in the gym like this is no easy feat. Many pro bodybuilders talk about how they found the sport in their late teens (at the earliest) or early 20s to cope with rough times. But the truth is, everyone comes to it at their own pace, some earlier than others. In the case of Morgan Nicholls, he clearly knew from a young age that this was something he wanted to be doing — or his parents knew, at least — and the rest is history. A 13 year-old kid doesn’t hit a 445 lb deadlift unless he really wants to; your parents can hardly force you to stay in the gym any more than they can make you do your high school homework. That’s an amount of personal dedication we can all envy.
Who knows where the career of child bodybuilders will lead? It’s a strange situation and very hard to say. Many of them go on to bright futures in professional sports or on the bodybuilding stage, though an equal number give up fitness entirely and continue on a different path. The only disadvantage to getting fit so young is that it’s still so early to be figuring out what you’re doing, many young bodybuilding sensations simply find another interest or give up. It doesn’t like Morgan Nicholls will anytime soon though, and hopefully his interest will turn him into a pro one day. He certainly has an incredible head start on the competition, but only dedication and hard work will make that count and translate into gains.
Never fear — it is never too late to get into bodybuilding, at age 13 or 73. Everyone can make serious headway at their own level and set new PRs for themselves. Whether what you do will be meaningful to you is yours to judge. Morgan Nicholls is impressive not because of the numbers he lifts but because the extreme dedication he shows in the gym is so admired.
*All images and media courtesy of Instagram.
