At ITS and IFS a topic that arises regularly amongst coaches revolves around a common thread of injury risk, preventing injuries, rehabbing injuries and recovery. If you or your child has regularly experienced injuries or you’re keen on staying injury free, you might find this article worthwhile.
More often than not when any of the above topics are spoken about at ITS/ IFS the conversation diverts to a side topic of overall training and playing load. Training frequency is usually the first thing that most parents think of when they think of training load, when really, duration, intensity and training session variety are aspects that are equally as important. The real issue though is not how much is right for anyone and everyone but how much each individual can handle at any particular point in time.
ITS/IFS is a unique environment that provides all students with access to a large volume of high level training that significantly increases their opportunities to improve and thus succeed in tennis or football. I don’t think there would be too many people arguing with me that undertaking a greater amount of quality training for any skill is going to enhance your chances of success in that chosen area. The problems lie in having to restrict this training volume to try and decrease injury risk. This is obviously not ideal but in the short term is unfortunately inevitable. The real goal moving forward though is to maintain or increase training volume by improving resilience to injury. By laying down a solid foundation of quality movement patterns that bulletproof the body, it enables that body to handle greater training demands without breaking down.
It is just like an old car that starts overheating on long drives or at high speeds but seems to handle short trips at lower speeds fine. You can decrease the stress on the car by continuing to drive it at slower speeds for shorter distances and it may continue to work well. Speed it up again or go on a long trip though and you will probably encounter some problems. Those restrictions in workload may suit some people but I can guarantee you – that car will never be a race car. Those same parameters apply to the body. If you are the type of person who just wants to have a casual muck around kick or hit of tennis with your mates once a week in the local park then you will probably get by perfectly well with a poor movement foundation and not get injured. If this casual kick around then suddenly doubles its normal time length or turns into an extra competitive game then it won’t take long before you reach your breaking point.
The main point I’m trying to get across is that just doing less is not the solution but rather just a band aid that will mask the problem. In Part 2 of this blog post I will be showing you some examples of the work we are currently doing with the tennis program to lay a foundation on which we can continue to build, for years to come.
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