The Relationship Between Training Load & Injury (Part 1 of 3)
Training loads can be directly responsible for load related injuries (e.g. tendinopathies, stress reactions/fractures etc) if it is not managed correctly. This can have serious ramifications on an athlete’s performance trajectory due to the extended period of time required to return to play from load related injuries (e.g. a stress fracture can take 8-12 weeks until the athlete can return to play).
So, what is training load? Training load is a term used to describe how much work an athlete does which is defined as the amount of “stress placed on the body by the performed activity”. This can be simplified by the equation; training load = intensity (HR, RPE etc) x duration (minutes) x frequency (number of training sessions per week).
The Plant Analogy
The plant analogy is an evidence-based tool to help patients understand the relationship between training load and injury. It was created by J. Patmore in 2024 to assist high-level youth basketball athletes diagnosed with stress fractures to understand how this injury occurred and strategies to prevent future occurrences.
Take a 30cm tall plant (athlete) that has been growing steadily on 250mL of water (training load) every other day. Then one day you go and pour 500mL of water on this plant. You’re gonna cause that root system (the athlete’s tendons, bones etc) some damage but nothing too problematic if you give it an extra day to allow the sunlight (adequate rest, nutrition, sleep) to work through the excess water. However, let’s say you continue to pour 500mL of water on the plant, every single day. You’re not allowing enough time for the sunlight to work through the excess water, nor are you providing the plant with the correct amount of water to allow for optimal growth. That root system is going to become water logged and mouldy (stress reactions/reactive tendinopathies) and it will begin to fragment (stress fractures/degenerative tendinopathies) until the root system becomes dysfunctional and dies.
However, if you pour the correct amount of water onto the plant, allow adequate time between waterings, and expose that plant to the right amount of sunlight it will THRIVE and, you can gradually increase the amount of water to grow the root system so it becomes stronger and more resilient e.g. broken stems do not alter the plant’s growth (injury resilience). Eventually, over months of gradual water quantity progression, you will be able to reach that 500mL of water you started with which initially would have destroyed the root structure.
This is why the relationship between training load and rest is vital to monitor and correct when necessary.
Look out Part 2 next week where we dive into how to calculate training load!
