The Importance of Off-Season Training Load Management for Youth Athletes

School’s out for the summer!!!

For international school students in Tokyo, the summer is long and for student athletes the break between seasons is even longer. School sport often wraps up weeks before the end of the academic year and doesn't get started for several weeks after classes recommence. This means that players will often have up to 3 months at a time without structured practice or games.

Whilst this does provide a chance to rest and recover both physically and mentally, it also leads to deconditioning. Kids may lose their sports specific fitness built-up during the season and more importantly the tissues of the body such as muscle bone and tendon lose some of their load tolerance and capacity.

The problem here is that after the summer kids are often thrown quickly into a high volume of training to which they're not accustomed to, leading to overuse injury. This is something we see quite frequently and October is often the time when we see these injuries come into the clinic, where kids have been back at their sport for 3 to 4 weeks and some of these niggles are starting to set in.

Strategies to avoid this.

• Maintenance summer training. Coaches should educate their athletes on the importance of maintaining some volume of running, sprinting and jumping (if appropriate) over the summer months. Even just 2 to 3 times a week of 30 to 50% of the running volume covered in a typical match or practice session is sufficient to maintain cardiovascular capacity and tissue tolerance. Students should be should then be encouraged to start ramping this up in the last week or two before before school commences to get ready for the start of the season.

• Having students on the same team on a group chat or linked to a group training document can be great for accountability.

• Encourage athletes to meet with a physiotherapist, trainer or strength & conditioning coach to set up a summer strength training program so they can develop specific abilities to help with their performance and injury prevention upon resumption of their sport.

• The first few weeks of practice at the start of the season should be treated as a ramping up period to allow the athletes to become accustomed to the training loads. This may at first appear counter-productive as fitness and skill levels may not come up quite as quickly, but the positive affect on injury reduction and potential to decrease overtraining/burnout will ultimately end in a more positive result for the individual athletes and the team as a whole.

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