Training load includes everything that stresses the body during training and competition. It’s important to consider both the number, duration, and intensity of training sessions.
All activities that stress the body cause a reaction; gradually increasing the training load helps the body to adapt and tolerate more, while too much training load can be harmful. This is known as the principle of progression in training, and it essentially involves planning your training properly. Effective training planning provides better conditions for optimal performance and reduces the risk of injury.
Load management is essentially the same as training planning. The key to load management is ensuring proper progression, allowing the mind and body adequate time to adapt to the training. This primarily involves “timing” different loads appropriately. Large fluctuations in weekly training load are a major factor in injury development, especially when there are significant increases in training load from one week to the next.
How Do I Do It?
To measure the load, you need to find a way to quantify relevant activities. Duration and frequency are easy to quantify, but intensity is a bit trickier. We refer to Olympiatoppen’s intensity scale for an overview of different tools to quantify intensity.
A simple method is to record the time you have trained and multiply it by perceived exertion. This method is known as the Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE). Perceived exertion is recorded on a scale from 0 to 20, where 0 representsvery easytraining and 20 represents extremely hard training. Combined with the time spent on training, this gives you a score for the day’s training load. The total training load for a week is calculated by adding up all the scores for the week.
How much should the training load increase week by week?
Unfortunately, there is no magic number for how much the training load should increase, but the key is to build up physical capacity gradually.This means that you need to have a plan and manage trainingload based on what the athlete is accustomed to. It´s crucial to ensure the load doesn’t increase too much, meaning it shouldn´t fluctuate significantly from week to week. At the same time, we want to make sure the athlete is progressing by getting enough training stimuli.
Training planning involves progression and adaptation: training enough, but not too much, and not too littleeither. This is an individual and a time-consuming process to figure out, which is why it can be a good ideafor athletes to start early to learn about this! The TRAINING DIARY is a great tool for managing training load and ideally it should be used TOGETHER WITH A COACH! The training diary allows you to adhere to important training principles, and to:
1. Keep track
2. Plan
3. Evaluate
4. Adapt
If your athlete is feeling a niggle or excessive fatigue, don’t be afraid to rework the training week. Changing around an athlete’s workload can reduce the risk of injury while improving workout quality. This doesn’t have to mean reducing volume or intensity, try just rearranging things to give the athlete a bit more relief at different times. I recommend moving around concentrated intensity and shifting hard days.
Let’s take a triathlete for example. Their schedule calls for running and biking on Tuesday and Thursday and swimming Monday, Wednesday, and Friday throughout the workweek. If the Tuesday run didn’t go well due to the athlete experiencing knee pain, then instead of running on Thursday, give the athlete an extra day off of running and run Friday instead. If you’re hesitant about the athlete running the full duration of the Friday run, shorten the session by one third and either add a short run on Saturday or add the missed duration to the Sunday long run.
There are plenty of creative ways to mitigate training load throughout the week so the athlete can stay injury-free and prioritize de-loading the body when needed.
A simple rule of thumb to follow is what I call the 24/48 rule. If an athlete is experiencing a non-sinister pain that doesn’t require immediate care, reduce training stress for the first 24 hours, adapt the training plan, and remain in communication with the individual. If their pain lasts greater than 48 hours, refer them to the appropriate medical professional.
Knowing how the medical system works in regards to accessing your sports specialist is important. Many states offer Direct Access to physical therapy, meaning the athlete can access their PT without a script from the doctor. This will allow the patient to bypass expensive and time-intensive obstacles prior to seeing their physical therapist.
I hope these guidelines help you maintain injury-free athletes. Be confident in your approach to modify training, know when to ask for help, and create a healthy foundation for a season of training and racing.
Several factors affect how much training load an athlete can tolerate, such as different physical conditions, growth periods, health issues and strains from life itself.
For example: If two athletes complete the same training session, the training load will affect them differently if you ask them. This is an important point in team sports or for different athletes within the same training group. For some – the training will be perceived as very hard, while for others quite OK. It’s important to take this into account, and ideally, the session should be adjusted based on each athlete’s individual level and condition. However, we do understand this can be challenging but it is nevertheless important to keep in mind, especially for young and adolescent athletes.
An athlete is particularly prone to injuries after periods of low training load; it always takes time to build the body back up after periods of less training. Holidays are a typical example whentraining load can be low. To avoid overuse injuries, it’s important either to keep on training during such periods, or to gradually increase the training load after holidays. Another example of particularly vulnerable times is when an athlete is returning to sport after being injured or ill.If the athlete has been out for more than one or two weeks, they will often lack important physical conditioning after such periods. To avoid new injuries or illnesses, it’s important to gradually increase the training load when the athlete returns to training and competition.
