CEC
ARTICLE
1 OF 5
ARTICLES
INJURY & REHAB
MANAGING
TRAINING LOADS
LESSONS FROM PROFESSIONAL
SPORT TO REDUCE YOUR CLIENT’S
INJURY RISK
By using a simple formula you can track and manage your client’s training
volumes and intensities to safely increase strength and significantly reduce
injury risk, writes PT and fitness educator Dan Jolley.
t’s in everyone’s best interests to
prevent injuries. Clients get to
keep training. Trainers get more
consistent sessions with the
client. The client gets better results (we
hope!), and the trainer gets referrals and
enquiries from a job well done.
Injuries are impossible to predict. It’s
also impossible to know when an injury has
been prevented (after all, it never happened).
There are many things we can do, however,
to significantly reduce a client’s injury risk.
One of the most effective, and arguably
simplest, things we can do is to monitor our
client’s training volumes and intensities.
There has been a clear trend in recent
times towards higher intensities of exercise
for everyday exercisers, and that’s no bad
thing. When people train on their own,
research shows they usually select exercise
intensities that are too low to elicit the
I
training response they want. With fitness
professionals pushing them safely to train
harder, their exercise outcomes can be
improved.
There are, however, two exceptions to the
‘harder is better’ approach that we need to
understand. First, we get different training
adaptations from different intensities. We
need to select the right intensity to get the
job done. Second, we need to choose the
right volume. As a rule, higher intensity
means shorter, less frequent sessions. High
volumes of hard training increase our injury
risk, while short, easy sessions mean we
don’t get a training effect. This shouldn’t be
news to anyone.
But it’s more complicated than that,
of course. This is all relative. Our clients
differ in terms of the training they can
tolerate: what is a lot for one person is not
for another.
THE QUICK READ
• One of the most effective things
trainers can do to help clients avoid
injuring themselves is to monitor
client’s training volumes and intensities
• Using RPE to calculate training load is a
subjective way of measuring training
volume and intensity that factors in
changes in a client’s physical and
mental state
• By tracking your client’s training week,
you can use the data to build weekly
loads over time, increasing their
tolerance and safety
• Training load should be built up gradually,
with increases being kept to no more
than around 30% week to week.
NETWORK SUMMER 2019 | 11