If you’re a boy or girl (or the parent of one) who would like to learn how to grow taller at 14 fast, then this research-backed guide will answer your key questions.
So let’s find out who can actually get taller at 14 years old and by how much.
Other Grow Taller Guides:
- Average height for 14 year olds
- How to get taller fast
- How to get taller at 10
- How to get taller at 11
- How to get taller at 12
- How to get taller at 13
- How to get taller at 15
- How to get taller at 16
- How to get taller at 17
- How to get taller at 18
How much taller will I grow at 14?
How much taller can you grow at 14 years old? According to the data, most boys will grow around 2 inches taller after the age of 14, whereas most girls won’t increase in stature and will simply maintain their current height.
Now, I realize that this is probably not what you want to hear if you’re a 14 year old girl who wants to grow taller. However, it’s important that we don’t cover the facts and lead you down a futile path to a height increase that’s simply not possible.
That said, there are some girls who do grow taller after the age of 14. So the next section will explain how your diet, exercise routine, and sleeping schedule can aid what is, admittedly, a genetically-determined process.
How to grow taller at 14 for boys
Since most boys grow well beyond the age of 14, a significant height increase is possible for many male fourteen year olds.
Height is, of course, mainly determined by your genetics. But while your peers are staying up late and eating junk food, you can be nourishing your body with vitamin D and triggering growth hormone production with a pleasant and restful sleep.
Research shows that sleep deprivation can disrupt your growth hormone production. [1] So to optimize your genetic height growth abilities, you should aim for 8-10 hours of sleep per 24 hours.
On top of sleeping more, you need to exercise every day or on a near-daily basis so that you can further boost growth hormone production. It’s important to do workouts that you enjoy so that you can stick to them and reap the rewards.
Some days you could go swimming, others, you could simply do jumping jacks and bodyweight exercises at home, and you could also lift resistance bands as part of your muscle and bone-strengthening resistance training routine.
We’ll discuss the diet side of things for getting taller at 14 a bit later on.
How to get taller at 14 for girls
As mentioned, most girls won’t get much taller after their 14th birthday.
Note the word most. This means that while the majority of girls stop growing at roughly age 14, some girls continue to grow after their 14th birthday.
Your job is to lead a healthy lifestyle that, at the very least, promotes optimal physical development and potentially height increase as well.
So, make sure to get plenty of sleep and do a daily workout of moderate to vigorous intensity. You shouldn’t train to exhaustion, but you should feel like you’ve done a proper session of exercise.
Additionally, you want to avoid nutrient deficiencies so that you’re not robbing your body of vital vitamins and minerals.
For example, research shows that a boy and girl who were growth hormone deficient started to grow when they received a zinc supplement. [2] In this specific example, the girl was 14 years old, showing that, while unlikely statistically, girls can definitely grow taller after 14 years old.
With this in mind, some parents give their children a trace mineral supplement to help their 14 years old cover their nutritional bases.
What exercises can make you grow taller at 14 years old?
While there are no special exercises that will magically make you grow taller at 14 years old, it’s certainly plausible that a lack of physical activity could inhibit your height development to some degree.
Now, this isn’t to say that you should work out as much as possible. Not at all. Your body needs time to rest and recover so that it can grow and develop.
Still, performing some kind of exercise on a daily basis is necessary for a 14 year old boy or girl to be optimally healthy.
And since we know that height development is easier to achieve when you’re healthy rather than sick, it’s a good idea to work out regularly.
Research also shows that teenagers tend to perform less exercise as they get older, so you can get ahead of your peers by following a simple and sustainable exercise routine. [3]
Just make sure to perform both strength training and cardiovascular exercise. Resistance training strengthens your bones and builds muscle mass, which is crucial for every person of every age.
Is yoga good for increasing your height after 14?
Yoga is a low-intensity activity that has many benefits. However, height increase is not one of them.
Doing yoga can improve your posture and encourage you to stand taller rather than slouch. This won’t directly lengthen your bones, but it will help you to maximize the stature that you currently have.
Doing yoga might help you to relax, which is helpful for getting a good night’s sleep. So, indirectly, performing yoga may help you to take full advantage of the growth hormone that gets released during sleep.
Should you have a growth spurt at 14 years old?
Whether or not you’ll have a growth spurt at age 14 mainly comes down to your individual genetics. If you’re still quite a bit shorter than your parents, then you may still experience an increase in height.
That said, we can make some estimations based on the data that we have available.
Statistically, most 14 year olds boys will experience a 2-inch height increase between the ages of 14 and 17. But this isn’t to say that some 14 year old boys won’t grow 3-4 inches taller.
As for girls, most girls will not get significantly taller after the age of 14. Some might grow an inch or a half inch, which isn’t exactly uncommon for females of this age.
However, most 14 year old girls simply won’t gain large amounts of height unless they’re a genetic outlier.
What foods can help to make a 14 year old boy or girl taller?
If you want to increase your height at 14 years old, then you should eat foods that nourish your body with all of the necessary vitamins and minerals. Additionally, you should eat enough food so that you’re not restricting your calories.
Getting into the specifics, eating a variety of different fruits and vegetables (of various colors) is a great way to build a healthy body because certain fruits are really high in vitamin C, like oranges, and others are packed with potassium, like bananas.
Getting plenty of protein is also important for growing tall. So make sure to consume some of the following foods on a daily basis: Dairy, fish, lean meats, red meats, eggs, and beans.
Your body also needs fats to maintain healthy hormone levels. You can get fats from foods like nuts, avocados, seeds, and cheese, as well as from fatty protein sources like whole milk, salmon, and red meat.
Some experts recommend minimizing carbohydrate intake, whereas others advise making them your main food source. The truth of the matter may well be somewhere in the middle, but a growing 14 year old shouldn’t arbitrarily restrict perfectly healthy food sources.
Foods like potatoes go well with any of the above protein and fat sources, enabling you to eat full nutritious meals that are both healthy and satisfying.
Oatmeal is another great option because you can boost the protein content with milk and supercharge its nutritional value by adding various fruits, nuts, or seeds.
How to get taller at 14 naturally: In Summary
We hope that this article gave you all the key information on how to get taller at 14 years old.
While most boys and girls will have experienced the majority of their height growth by this age, some teenagers—especially boys—can still grow quite a bit taller after age 14.
So while you can’t get taller overnight, you may still experience more height growth over the coming months and years.
Ultimately, now that you know how to grow taller at 14 years old using healthy methods, it’s just a case of sticking to a sustainable sleeping schedule, exercise routine, and diet.
This way, you can tick all the boxes and ensure that you’re doing everything in your power to provide the right foundation for height increase in particular and physical development in general.
References
- Davidson, J. R., Moldofsky, H., & Lue, F. A. (1991). Growth hormone and cortisol secretion in relation to sleep and wakefulness. Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN, 16(2), 96–102.
- Collipp, P. J., Castro-Magana, M., Petrovic, M., Thomas, J., Cheruvanky, T., Chen, S. Y., & Sussman, H. (1982). Zinc deficiency: improvement in growth and growth hormone levels with oral zinc therapy. Annals of nutrition & metabolism, 26(5), 287–290. https://doi.org/10.1159/000176575
- Kin-Isler, A., Asci, F. H., Altintas, A., & Guven-Karahan, B. (2009). Physical activity levels and patterns of 11-14 year-old Turkish adolescents. Adolescence, 44(176), 1005–1015.