THE EFFECTS OF DETRAINING

Detraining (decreasing training volume/intensity due to injury, illness, holidays etc.) significantly increases your risk of injury when returning to normal workloads.

The Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio (ACWR) looks at how your training load this week (acute load) compares to your rolling average over the last 4 weeks (chronic load). An ACWR of between 0.8-1.3 is the sweet spot, and any ratio outside of the zone increases your risk of a soft tissue injury.

People often feel refreshed and motivated when coming back from holidays, so they quickly return back to their previous levels of exercise with the best of intentions. What is not considered here is that detraining when on holidays will see a huge drop in their chronic workload, and therefore quickly returning to previous workload after this drop will significantly spikey the ACWR (and thus, risk of injury).

So how do we get around this?

Either:

Maintain some sort of activity level when on holidays (without compromising too much time with family and friends) so as to not drop your chronic workload too much OR
Do not rush straight back into previous activity levels when returning, and gradually progress your load over a matter of weeks instead.

Chris Bryceson

B. Health Sciences (Physio), APAM

CB Physiotherapy