Bells Broadcast: How to balance training load and strength

A key concept in preventing and managing running injuries is understanding the balance between training load and your capacity to handle that load. Holistically it’s a case of working within your limits and not pushing your training beyond what your body can cope with.

Today, Annabel and the teams at Longevity Exercise Physiology Drummoyne, Edgecliff, Marrickville, Bella Vista, Randwick, Pymble, Balmain, Neutral Bay, Coburg – Melbourne, and Barrie, Ontario – Canada will talk about the right ways in which you need to load your tissues in order for them to adapt and prevent injury.

Most injuries occur when training load outweighs load capacity. In this case individuals that have increased their capacity too quickly, and exceeded what their body can cope with, can increase their risk of injury. Adaptation is the positive response of an organism or tissue to benefit its function. Our body is very adaptable and responsive and is made up of complex living tissue. During everyday life, our bodies are exposed to a wide range of loads depending on the movement patterns and degree of muscular control that we undertake these movements with (Bmj, 2016).

 

“Adaptation is the positive response of an organism or tissue to benefit its function”

 

It is important that we load our muscles and bones to promote adaptions in strength and load capacity of our bodies. However, it is essential to load our bodies at the right rate. While the body will respond positively to any overload to the tissue, if we push too far or too quickly, the body is not able to adapt quickly enough, and we get a painful reactive response and tissue damage. One of the most common causes of injury onset is increasing training load to the tissues too quickly.  This can be a result of increasing training volume, frequency or intensity at a rate faster than the body is able to adapt to (Kjær & Magnusson, 1970).

Loading tissues through sport and exercise is healthy and promotes adaptation such as strength gains, improvements in fitness, and even tissue healing. Problems often occur when tissue load increases too quickly which we commonly see from training error in runners. When an injury occurs to a tissue, its capacity is reduced and will need to gradually build up again. This is part of the reason why injury recurrence is common and previous injuries are a key risk factor for future running injuries (Docking, S. I., & Cook, J. 2019).

 

“One of the most common causes of injury onset is increasing training load to the tissues too quickly.  This can be a result of increasing training volume, frequency or intensity at a rate faster than the body is able to adapt to.”

(Kjær & Magnusson, 1970)

 

If you want to reduce injury risk, or plan effective rehab try to balance training load with capacity. Sensible training structure with a planned, gradual progression and individualised strength and conditioning can be a powerful combination in achieving this. Additionally, ensuring that you increase your training load in a slow and linear manner, make sure that you try to incorporate some strength training to improve overall biomechanics and ensure that you fuel your body with a healthy nutritious diet.

 

“Problems often occur when tissue load increases too quickly which we commonly see from training errors in runners”

 

If you want to be able to ensure you are giving the right load to your tissues and best preventing your risk of injury, give Longevity Exercise Physiology Drummoyne, Edgecliff, Marrickville, Bella Vista, Randwick, Pymble, Balmain, Neutral Bay, Coburg – Melbourne, and Barrie, Ontario – Canada a call on 1300 964 002 today!

 

 

Written by Annabel Bergman

 

References:

Bmj, 2016. Balancing training load and tissue capacity. BJSM blog – social media’s leading SEM voice. Available at: https://blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2016/04/11/balancing-training-load-and-tissue-capacity/ [Accessed September 1, 2022].

Docking, S. I., & Cook, J. (2019). How do tendons adapt? Going beyond tissue responses to understand positive adaptation and pathology development: A narrative review. Journal of musculoskeletal & neuronal interactions, 19(3), 300–310.

Kjær, M. & Magnusson, S.P., 1970. Mechanical adaptation and tissue remodeling. SpringerLink. Available at: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-0-387-73906-9_9 [Accessed September 1, 2022].