Managing overload after lockdown
Gaby Pimentel explains how to manage your body to maximise results and minimise injury
Some injuries are unavoidable, however others, such as overload injury, are very much avoidable. How you managed your load during a lockdown may seem a strange topic to write about. However, did you do much more exercise than normal? Do you have aches and niggles that have slowly started to appear? Do areas of your body hurt (e.g. knees, ankles, calves), but you’re not sure why? Lockdown has caused many of us to greatly increase our daily exercise, as a way of staying sane, and this is prime territory for an overload injury.
When we exercise, our body goes through a cycle of microtrauma and repair. We cause a small amount of damage to our muscles/tissues, our body repairs them and as a result they adapt and get stronger. However, when the repetitive microtrauma exceeds the capacity of our body to repair itself, things start to break down and cause injury. Overload injury!
Increased/excessive volume of training
Increased/excessive frequency of training
Increased/excessive intensity of training
Suddenly change in type of exercise
Felt excessive fatigue and not enough recovery
Symptoms will normally develop over a period of time. Typically, they come on gradually and at the beginning most feel like it’s something you can shake off. However, the more you continue to train, the worse your symptoms will become. There are other intrinsic factors that can contribute, such as muscle weaknesses and imbalances, but these can only be determined through physical assessment.
What is my load and can I prevent overloading?
The beauty about the following advice is that it doesn’t only apply to lockdown, it can be a useful way of managing your training once normal life has resumed. The term ‘load’ refers to any form of physical exertion placed on the body, anything from high intensity sprints, to a leisurely stroll, to a kick around in the park. The following advice is a strategy used by the England women’s football team to track their weekly loading, as a way to prevent injury and keep the squad fit.
The first step of quantifying your load is to be able to quantify how difficult something was, or how hard you found it. For this we use the ‘Rate of Perceived Exertion’ scale, otherwise known as RPE. See the following diagram.
Next step is using your RPE score to quantify loading. Simply multiply your RPE by how many minutes of exercise you did:
Minutes performed of exercise x RPE score = Loading score
For example: - Yesterday I worked out for 22 minutes and I scored it 6 on the RPE scale.
22 x 6 = 132
I would have a loading score of 132 for yesterday’s workout. The clever aspect of this method of quantifying load can be shown in the following two examples:
A high intensity workout where I worked at my absolute maximum (10) for 13 minutes, would give me a load of 130
13 x 10 = 130
A low intensity workout that I did for 130 minutes (such as a long, leisurely walk), that was very easy, would also give me a load of 130
130 x 1 = 130
These examples show how different intensities, duration and styles of workouts can all give the same loading score.
The next step. Every time you complete exercise, calculate your loading score and scribble it down. Do this for one whole week and this will give you your weekly loading score. Remember, loading is calculated by multiplying the minutes by your RPE. See example below:
How do I use my weekly loading score to prevent injury?
This is a simple calculation that is backed by research (for those interested, if you google ‘Tim Gabbett acute chronic workload ratio’ you will find extra information on this). Research shows that increasing your weekly loading by more than 1.5 times significantly increases your risk of overload injury. Using the weekly loading example above, this score can be used to calculate your maximal threshold for the next week. Therefore, keeping below this score will reduce your risk of overload injury, but conversely will give you a threshold to work up to if you want to safely push yourself.
See this following example for the final step on load management calculations:
Weekly loading score = 715.
715 x 1.5 = 1072.5
Therefore, Week 2 ‘weekly loading score’ cannot exceed 1072.5. You can use this score to work towards as you continue to track your daily loading, then as you reach your threshold, you can decrease time/intensity as a way of safely training.
You can calculate the loading of each activity you do by multiplying the minutes performed by how difficult it was (a score from 0-10, known as RPE)
Add up the loading score of every activity done within a week, to give your weekly loading
Each week, you should increase your loading by no more than 1.5 in order to reduce the risk of overload injury
You can use your maximal threshold either as a number to avoid exceeding, or a target for safe training
This process of load management is key in staying injury free and can be used long term when back in full, normal training