IS YOUR YOUNG ATHLETE OVERTRAINING? a guide on THE WHY, HOW AND WHAT TO DO
what is overtraining?
If you’ve got kids, lets say from 11 years and up, you’re no doubt aware of the juggling act that now comes with teenage life. Between homework and assignments, social commitments (the bloody phone!), and then the year-round club and school sport, you’re unlikely to have a weekend without sport until they’ve left the nest! As the demands on our kids grows, we’re noticing a significantly higher number are sustaining some pretty serious injuries, and it’s not until we look at what they’ve been up to, do we get an understanding as to why.
Overtraining occurs following a sustained period in which a person’s body is pushed beyond its ability to properly recover. This leads to a range of issues, including decreased performance, illness, exhaustion, loss of appetite, poor concentration and sleep, and an increased risk of injury. These injuries can range from a muscle strain, to tendonitis, right through to stress fractures that effectively wipe out a year of sport (shout out to Ivy for her rehab)
Why is this a problem?
At some point between my own graduation (turned 32 this year - hello random knee soreness) and today, the student athlete became an in-demand asset, with gifted and hard working kids being pulled or even given ultimatums between school and club commitments, often attempting to balance the two until something gives. Heaven forbid these kids then make it to a representative level, where there’s an underlying expectation that they’ve got two afternoons free for additional training.
The result of this is a child that’s going through a stack of hormonal shifts, is being fuelled by parents who are trying their best but if we’re brutally honest, don’t always have the answers, is staying up late because social media now follows them everywhere, and is training or competing 7 days a week.
When you put all the pieces together, it doesn’t look too good!
So what can we do about it?
Right now, it doesn’t look like club and school sport will talk to each other, so it falls back to us to make the responsible decision regarding the training volume and injury risk we want to expose kids to.
Thankfully, there’s a beautifully simple (and free!) way to do this. Training impulse (TRIMP) is a load monitoring tool that takes the intensity of the session and multiplies it by the session’s duration. This number is then mapped across weeks and months to highlight any trends or upcoming risk periods, allowing you to make some educated decisions in conjunction with your child’s wellbeing.
Generally speaking, a rapid increase in TRIMP is associated with a higher risk of overuse injuries over the coming weeks. When compared to a monthly average, the acute to chronic workload ratio (ACWR) should stay between 0.8 - 1.3. Anything above 1.3 now highlights an increased risk of injury.
What to do when in the red?
Using the example on the right, weeks 1-3 incorporated preseason training, before then including match fixtures. As you can see, the added duration and intensity shoots this athlete into overtraining territory, meaning we have to be diligent in monitoring for signs of overtraining for the coming month, as the risk of injury now skyrockets.
If they kick their feet up, while yes it’s needed, we’re now encouraging a yo-yo between high and low TRIMP scores that’s going to be really hard to get some consistency out of. So instead, let's have a week with modified training. What this looks like will be up to you, your child, and probably a coach or two, but personally I find that something unstructured or shortening sessions usually helps.
EXCEL SPREADSHEET ROOKIE? DON’T SWEAT IT!
If this sounds all well and good in theory, but you’ve got as much ability on microsoft excel as your kids do at tidying up after themselves
Pop your details below and I can email a copy of this spreadsheet to you, with a detailed run down with automated colour coordination to save you the stress!
