A. Depends on “tissue loading”
The buzz word in recent times with sporting injuries is “tissue loading.” While there are many factors that can contribute to the risk of a soft tissue injury a common contributing factor is to have too much or too little loading of the soft tissues leading up to the injury.
The AIS has compiled data over several years with many sports and found that very simply when you change your load you significantly increase your chance of getting injured. The findings were very similar to research done by Cricket Australia, Rugby League, and Australian Rules Football (Blanch & Gabbett, BJSM, 2015).
“Tissue loading” is a term used to describe the total stress on the body over a period of training. It can be calculated in a number of different ways and can include measures of distance, heart rate, perceived effort, time spent training etc. For their research at the AIS they calculated “tissue load” as training time multiplied by rate of perceived exertion (RPE).
Some general rules to follow:
Rule 1:
Do not change your training load by more than 30% week to week. Once you change your load by >30% you are 6 times more likely to sustain an injury, if you change your load by > 50% you are 8 times more likely to sustain an injury
Rule 2:
Ongoing vs acute training load. Ongoing training load is the average of your last 4 weeks of training. Acute training load is what you did this week. If your acute load is >150% of your ongoing load then you more than double your risk of sustaining an injury.
Rule 3:
The injury often presents 2-3 weeks after the training load error. With many injuries you need to think back to what you have done over the past month to find out where you went wrong.
So, if you are looking to shear some sheep and not injure your back it is important to not do too much too soon and to progressively increase the load over time. Professional shearers often spend many hours in positions that the average office worker would not last very long at all – it is all to do with tissue loading and the soft tissues having time to adapt to these loads. On the other hand, the professional shearer would most likely have difficulty tolerating the static loads of sitting in an office chair for prolonged periods and be at risk of sustaining a back injury!
