Load Management = Training Planning
Load management – the balance between not training too much or too little – is the most important thing you can do to improve your performance and reduce injury risk. But how do you know what the right amount of training is? In this article, we will tell you about how athletes and coaches can plan their training in order to manage both the training load effectively, while at the same time reducing injury and illness risk.
The body has an excellent ability to adapt to the applied training load, but the key is always to gradually increase the amount of training. You become more resistant to injuries if you are in good shape. However, the risk of injury increases if you train too much.
What is Training Load?
Training load includes everything that stresses the body during training and competition. It's important to consider both the number, duration, and intensity of training sessions.
All activities that stress the body cause a reaction; gradually increasing the training load helps the body to adapt and tolerate more, while too much training load can be harmful. This is known as the principle of progression in training, and it essentially involves planning your training properly. Effective training planning provides better conditions for optimal performance and reduces the risk of injury.
Load Management
Load management is essentially the same as training planning. The key to load management is ensuring proper progression, allowing the mind and body adequate time to adapt to the training. This primarily involves "timing" different loads appropriately. Large fluctuations in weekly training load are a major factor in injury development, especially when there are significant increases in training load from one week to the next.
How Do I Do It?
To measure the load, you need to find a way to quantify relevant activities. Duration and frequency are easy to quantify, but intensity is a bit trickier. We refer to Olympiatoppen's intensity scale for an overview of different tools to quantify intensity.
A simple method is to record the time you have trained and multiply it by perceived exertion. This method is known as the Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE). Perceived exertion is recorded on a scale from 0 to 20, where 0 representsvery easytraining and 20 represents extremely hard training. Combined with the time spent on training, this gives you a score for the day's training load. The total training load for a week is calculated by adding up all the scores for the week.