Beyond Acute to Chronic Workload Ratios
Making Informed Decisions About Player's Training Loads
Measuring acute to chronic workloads has become a ubiquitous practice within professional sports over the past few years. But, I really question the efficacy of these practices. Of course, anything that teams can use to manage training loads is better than nothing, but that’s less of an argument for the acute to chronic workload ratio (ACWR) concept and really just points to the fact that we should make logical decisions with how we handle training volume on a week to week basis.
For those unfamiliar with the ACWR concept, the idea is that coaches can predict injury risk by calculating the ratio between acute training loads (typically over a 5-7 day period) and chronic training loads (typically over a 3-4 week period). The theory is that if acute training loads are too high in relation to chronic workloads, the athlete is at an increased risk of injury. I have no qualms with either of these assertions, broadly speaking. Of course, if you double your training volume from one week to t…
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