“training injury” paradox
Not too long ago, I used this study ( one of the studies) to build a scientific base to frame the ‘problem’, for sub optimal training protocols, poor workload management and poor workout designs, to say the least the panel I was pitching to was not too convinced, part of the problem was, they had no idea, (most) how something so small would have an impact of the overall body systems and part of the problem was, I didn’t do a great job explaining the ‘problem’ to my solution, so in a way, I didn’t explain to them in a way a layman or an investor would understand! However, they much preferred if I had done a clinical study myself!
I’m not discounting the validity of data on this paper or the “training-injury” paradox. It really is, any coach worth their salt would agree, on both accounts, over-training and under-training, which is worse? We may never know, even if we did, it defeats the purpose of finding a solution for the “ training-injury” paradox, the point is to find a framework/solution to overcome the paradox!
There is enough, data to prove that overtraining is in fact a thing, especially when you run tests against the endocrine system, how hormones react under and how that affects anywhere from recovery, sleep, appetite, performance psychology to motivation and attitude. There certainly are quite a few factors at play here, to name a few biomechanics, posture, natural movement patterns, recovery, physiological traits and to me most importantly genetics which indicates how and how hard one must train or how little someone should train before hitting that diminishing returns point of a kuznets curve. Also note, guys like David Goggins are exempt from this, or many special forces personnel or elite athletes who perform at the highest level, if you ask them, I have, replied along the lines “what does the ‘the body’ have to do with any of it ?”, because at this point it is largely mental, boils down to grit, hardiness and metal resilience!
However, when working with youth, it is a different ball game all together. Also important to understand the stage of athlete development. This is where a framework for foundational work is so important, sometimes it’s better to be under trained’, than to be overtrained and injured but that falls under the practitioner’s/coach’s overview. How do I as a coach, make sure my athlete is trained optimally? What tools do I use, how do I determine the best way to train them? What weak links do I need to strengthen? All these questions help you build a framework beat the paradox! This goes to say that we need a paradigm shift of how workouts and performance protocols are designed, which would contribute massively to reduce injury risk!
There are so many factors, from varying views. Fascial training has come to the surface in the past couple of years and have shown how it contributes to elite level athleticism, with a practice as small as playing sport barefoot in the younger formative years and how injuries in the lower limb extremities are minimized with athletes who had grown up doing that! From a biomechanical perspective, an athlete with a deviation in the knees, Valgus or Varum, would be better off under training as opposed to an athlete with well aligned knees because they would have the advantage of more economical biomechanics,( less friction and stress in the body, ankles and hips), even a deviation of 5 degrees would be negatively impacted with poor workload management. Additionally, program design for these athletes would need to look different, where pre-hab protocols and recovery element are programmed. A frame work to diagnose youth from a clinical perspective would make beating the paradox possible but obviously, difficult and the framework would rapidly evolve and some sort of general periodization would be established however it would be different, it would likely be a filtering or sorting system, that separate different types of youth athletes based on various key features that would profile them in a certain way, however they would all be trained the optimal way, for them!
