Risk of Injury Depending on Load

With the return of sport hopefully not too far away, the reality facing a lot of coaches and athletes might be the temptation to make up for lost time when it comes to training. In this post, the reasons why this might not be the best thing to do will be highlighted along with some recommendations on what might be a better way of returning to play safely.

When it comes to returning to sport, many of us would be familiar with the high volume, high intensity pre-season running and gym sessions completed in an attempt to ‘get fit’ again after a break from training. Unfortunately with this, many of us would too be familiar with the countless injuries sustained during pre-season.

Why is this?

Pre-season is generally the three- or four-month period (depending on the sport) in the run up to competition following an off-season period where, for the majority of athletes, no or very little training is completed. Pre-season is seen as a time where all the ‘hard-training’ is done before competition begins. However, the problem occurs with how this ‘hard-training’ is prescribed. Many athletes go from zero training in off-season to training three or more times a week at very high intensities. Studies have shown that rapid increases in training load result in increased risk of non-contact soft-tissue injuries being sustained.

So what is a rapid increase?

A rapid change in weekly training load is considered to be a >10% increase or decrease in the training load than that of the previous week (Piggott et al., 2009).

Athletes with very high weekly loads (table below) are also at an increased risk of sustaining non-contact soft-tissue injuries in pre-season.

(AU = session RPE x duration of session in minutes)

Some Recommendations

A study conducted by (Malone et al., 2017) noted that there is a requirement for coaches to prescribe appropriate training loads which will increase the players fitness whilst also reducing the risk of, and protect against injury. Below are adequate 1, 2 and 3 weekly cumulative training loads for team sport athletes (soccer).

(AU = session RPE x duration of session in minutes)

As always, prescribing training loads is not a one size fits all approach. Every athlete is individual and training loads prescribed to athletes must be individual if they are to be effective.