New Year Training Camps

However, these camps carry a risk that as a physio, I have seen on numerous times in the past – Injuries.

The reason these camps tend to create an unusual number of injuries is that of load management, or more specifically in this case poor load management.

Tim Gabbett has developed a tool which not only helps understand these injuries, but also helps identify how to prevent them. It is known as the acute to chronic work load ratio. This is a formula based on studies from many different sports, and can be used in many different scenarios, not just team camps.

It works by taking the workload over a period of typically 4 weeks and averaging this to determine your average over that time. This is then compared to your workload over the current week. If the amount for the current week is more than 15% greater than the 4 week average, the risk of injury increases. The greater the ratio the greater the risk of injury.

To give an example lets take cricket bowling. If a bowler delivers 100 balls a week for 4 weeks then the total is 400. You divide that by 4 weeks gives you an average load of 100wk. If over the next two weeks they are off for Christmas and don’t really do anything then there average of the 4 weeks drops to 50 (2 x 100wks  + 2 x 0 wks / 4wks). Then the first week back after the holidays they go on camp and have more sessions than normal, say do 120 balls. This makes their relative risk of injury 25%. That means a quarter of your squad are likely to get injured. Most of these happen straight away but a number also present 2 weeks down the track.

Don’t play cricket? Change the number of bowls for minutes on the water for rowers, jumps for a basketballer, or metres run for a team athlete. The formula has been shown to be accurate in a multiple of different sports.

So 1) keep your athletes doing something over the holidays or 2) make sure you build your training up gradually in the New Year or 3) do both, and start the year with a healthy squad of athletes.