Load Management
It's been quite sometime since my last post, and for the three people that actually read this blog (Hi Mom), heres a concept that will link all the other posts together.
I had briefly mentioned collagen, bone formation , the plastic and elastic nature of tissue. Put those concepts together and it will give you a very vital piece of information helping you manage your injury and/or train to your highest performance. It's the latest rage in sports medicine, and its considered to be Load management.
Training and competition will lead to tissue adaptation and ultimately higher levels of performance, its what's getting better is all about. It's the something that we all chase, a better result, more strength, speed, height, power, and greater control in our respective events.....and how could you not want to push yourself?!. However, there exists a balance to all of the performance and goal seeking behaviour, its the razor's edge of improvement vs burnout and it takes time and discipline to get the balance correct.
Load takes place in many ways, the most obvious is external loading such as training time, training frequency, and output such as speed , power and acceleration. The less obvious form of load takes place internal, these are factors such as sleep, stress, diet.
External and Internal Load examples- Taken from International Olympic Committee consensus statement on load in sport and risk of injury
To put it simply, there is much more to training than just having high efforts and high outputs, the things of an instagram dream account, real hardcore stuff. What it takes to train for a long term goal or to participate in your sport or activity for life, is a lot of management and control. It requires discipline to not overload and injury yourself, or even worse loose motivation, leave the instagram post for an off day.