Balancing act: The art of load management
The transition from receiving accolades to playing the blame game can be a wild journey in sports.
Following the recently concluded 2023 ICC World Cup and other global competitions, we’ve seen a range of opinions and discussions about our performance being conducted on various platforms, be it social media, live broadcasts or traditional media. But, instead of dwelling on the technical or tactical aspects of the game, let’s focus on its physical aspect, particularly the buzzworthy and fashionable term — load management.
When an individual athlete or a team achieves competitive success, it is only natural for the coaching and support staff to celebrate it. After all, success is often built on hard work, perseverance, planning, discipline, and sacrifices — something which they have been witness to. We also know that injuries are an inherent part of sports, and athletes who manage to stay injury-free throughout the season have a better likelihood of success.
So, how much of the success, be it team or individual, can be attributed to the head coach, medical staff or strength & conditioning coaches? When a team succeeds, is it due to good coaching or skilled players? And when it underperforms, why is the blame often on ‘inadequate fitness’?
Team dynamics
It is a common tendency to hold the performance and sports medicine teams responsible for injuries — either for making them train too hard or for not providing adequate rehabilitation. This is the reality of sports today.
With so many diverse opinions available on the benefits and drawbacks of high-training methods and protocols, it’s no surprise that sport coaches, performance & medical staff, and even athletes themselves, debate over the optimal approach to developing robust performances. There is no universal mantra for success that can apply to all athletes.
All over the world, sports teams at various levels, including high school, college, and professional, are recognising the importance of ‘load management’. But who is ‘responsible’ for it? Is it the coach, the performance staff, or the medical team?
We dissect each of their roles to find out the answer.
Performance and medical teams
If the goal of the programme is to develop the physical prowess required for competitive success, the strength and conditioning staff will monitor training and competition workload.
On the contrary, if the goal is to minimise workload-related injuries, the responsibility for collecting this data often falls on the physio and medical staff. However, these answers only partially explain who is responsible for load, performance, and injury management.
There’s a famous phrase that has been in vogue for a long time in sports: ‘Strength and conditioning staff break athletes, and the medical staff fix them’. It’s understood that inappropriate strength and conditioning programmes can increase the risk of injury. Rapid increase in training loads can result in poor performance.
However, not all injuries occur due to rapid increase in load, so not all the blame need to be attributed to the strength and conditioning staff.
If the medical staff are too conservative with their loading and progression strategies, it can also result in injuries, repeated ones at that, and consequently, poor performances. Clearly, both performance and medical staff play key roles in keeping athletes injury-free.
Coaching staff
Many coaches often state — “My performance staff, medical team, and other support staff handle athlete workload and performance domains. I’m a coach — that’s
what I do!” Being a high-pressure job, it takes special skill to ‘put their head in the fire every day’. While it’s judicious to not distract them from their job, it’s important they recognise that load can come from various sources, including skill-based activities that they engage in — like net practice.
Consider a fast bowler struggling with accuracy or preventing no balls. The first practice session after a game will likely include a lot of target practice at the nets. If the pacer is unprepared for this spike in bowling load, the session could increase the risk of injury.
In turn, if coaches don’t have their opening pacers available for the match, it can adversely impact performance and outcomes. In this respect, coaches also play a vital role in keeping athletes injury-free.
Athletes
There is one group of people that is seldom mentioned when an athlete experiences a breakdown due to workload-related injuries — the athletes themselves.
Imagine an athlete who returns completely deconditioned after a break. The performance and medical team will then provide a training programme for them to follow.
But if the athlete decides to sip piña coladas on the beach or enjoy vodka in a pub, and then go on to experience a breakdown on the first day of pre-season training, why should the performance, medical, or coaching staff assume full responsibility for it?
Athletes play a crucial role in arriving for training fully prepared on all fronts. It is their career — they ‘own’ it, and, therefore, they have a vital responsibility in keeping themselves fit and injury-free.
Stick to basics
Playing the ‘blame game’ is easy and can be fuelled by many people in many ways. But high-performance teams have the opportunity to change the way they view training load, injuries and performance, ultimately reaching new heights in individual or team events.
At the end of the day, what do all professionals aspire to achieve in high-performance coaching? The answer is plain and simple — high performance!
Be it winning a championship or simply achieving something previously considered unachievable, the goal is to perform well. In order to achieve high-level performances, athletes need to be fit. How do they do that? By training. Plain and simple.
When analysing the roles and responsibilities of sport coaches, strength & conditioning staff, sports medicine personnel, recovery staff and athletes, it’s clear that all of them ‘own’ performance.
Progression is the key, whether it's in training load or training transfer, and athletes need to be adaptable to achieve peak performance. From both the professionals' and athletes' perspectives, all necessary boxes need to be ticked in order to become world-beaters.