OVERUSE INJURIES OR TRAINING LOAD ERRORS?

We often blame injuries of insidious onset (those that gradually develop rather than happen in an acute incident) on overuse. That is, a gradual breakdown as a result of doing too much over and over. However research suggests that how much you train on its own does not increase your risk of injury. It is actually how your training load changes over time that puts you at risk.

The key indicator here is acute:chronic workload ratio. This looks at how your training load in the last week compares to your average training load over the last 4 weeks.

Any ratio above 1.2 increases your risk of injury (that is, increasing your training load by 20% compared to your weekly average over the previous 4 weeks).

For most athletes this isn’t a problem, as your training load will stay fairly consistent if you are training regularly. But consider someone who misses 1-2 weeks of training (e.g. due to illness or a holiday). This person may jump straight back into their previous training load, because to them it isn’t high. But compared to their rolling average over the previous 4 weeks (which would drop due to a break in training), it gives them a high acute:chronic load ratio, and therefore increases their risk of injury.

This is an example of a training load error, and is something that the literature tells us is increasingly important to consider.

Chris Bryceson

B. Health Sciences (Physio), APAM

CB Physiotherapy