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 father said go, she braced and dead-lifted a 145-pound (65.7kg) barbell.
Lucy is 10 years old and weighs 58 pounds (26kg).
“My fingers can finally touch!” she said, as her grip wrapped around the bar.
I joined Lucy and her parents, Michelle and Brett Milgrim, in their garage gym on New York’s Long Island, to watch one of Lucy’s strength training workouts. Lucy, who is in fourth grade, complemented her lifting with pullups and ring dips. In between sets, she talked about her favorite hairstyle (battle braids) and told stories about classmates who challenged her to lift them up at recess.
Lucy started strength training when she was eight, and she holds three United States records in powerlifting. She is a champion wrestler, too.
She is also the star of social media accounts run by her parents, which together have 232,000 followers. A video in which she dead-lifted 180 pounds (81.6kg) at a powerlifting meet, a personal record, has been viewed more than 67 million times and has 3.7 million likes.
She said she became interested in powerlifting after watching her parents work out. She asked her father, a lawyer and a wrestling coach, to train her.
He has 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 going to do something, you better step aside,” he said.
Lucy is one of a small but growing crop of kid fitness influencers attracting big followings on social media. Parents of these elementary schoolers and even toddlers share videos of their children hoisting barbells, pushing weighted sleds, doing dead hangs and otherwise flexing their muscles.
Strength training and young people
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, 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.
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 orthopaedics at the University of Iowa. “They took a real hard stance against it,” 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 are 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 recommended resistance training for children and adolescents not only to improve their health and fitness but also to prevent and recover from 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 Peterson, who was a co-author of the 2020 report. “I think people are starting to realise 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 eight to 13 in 2015, only 10 children 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, Faas said.
Children who share their feats of strength on social media are helping to “break the stigma” and show that it can be safe and fun, Faas said, as long as “the adults in charge are creating a safe environment.”
Focus on fun
Winter and Sky Duboc, ages seven and four, have been doing modified CrossFit workouts since they could walk. Their parents, Franco and Michelle Duboc, own a CrossFit gym in Miami and run an Instagram account with more than 120,000 followers. It features videos of their daughters doing squats, box jumps, pullups and more.
When Winter was an infant, her parents would plop her in a Pack ’n Play while they trained. But as she got older, she would try to imitate the exercises they were doing, they said. Before long, they ordered child-size versions of the equipment they used. When her sister, Sky, became a toddler, she wanted to do what her big sister was doing.
This year, the sisters took part in a scaled-down version of the CrossFit Open, a competition held at CrossFit affiliates. For 16 minutes, they did exercises including wall balls, box jumps and pullups. Their parents later posted a video of the event, which more than 40,000 people have liked.
The Dubocs 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.
“It’s fun to feel strong because you’re, like, really small,” Winter said. “And we feel good because we’re helping other people.”
Franco Duboc said 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.
The Milgrims and Dubocs said they took a cautious approach to their accounts, posting selectively and shielding their children from how many followers they have or how many likes a post racks up. “That’s very intentional,” said Milgrim, 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,” Michelle Duboc said.
Kids and social media
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, Finegan said, parents need to closely monitor how the accounts are affecting their children’s mental and emotional well-being and have a 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 Milgrims’ 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. – © 2026 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/30/well/move/kid-fitness-influencers.html.
