Is There a Tug of War Between Injury Risk and Performance?

The majority of the recent literature in load monitoring focuses on the association between training load measures and injury risk. However, injury risk is not the only outcome measure we are interested in… performance matters too! However, the understanding of the training-performance relationship in team sports is currently not as…

… But Does Injury Availability Affect your Team’s Physical Outputs?

Last month we explored the evidence base supporting the notion that athlete availability reduces your team’s chance of success. That post included a number of sources that demonstrated an association between injury rates and success. It may seem obvious but it is important to have the evidence to back up this…

Does Injury Availability Affect your Team’s Chance of Success?

The 2017/18 Premier League season has officially kicked off and so, therefore, have the injury statistic leagues.  It has long been suggested that injury rates and player availability affect a team’s chance of success.  This is not just the speculation of pundits or those down the pub; we have evidence…

The Debate on the Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio

I think it is an exciting time in training load research and applied practice. There is evidence-based analysis of training load taking place in the professional sporting environment as well as being published in the literature. In this post I will be focusing on the calculation of the acute:chronic workload…

Interview: Head of Sports Science at Swansea City AFC - Jonny Northeast

With the new Premier League season soon to kick off we are delighted to bring you an interview with Head of Sports Science at Swansea City AFC, Jonny Northeast. According to public statistics on sites such as Premier Injuries and Physio Room (yes they are not perfect but they still…

Acute:Chronic Workloads and Rehabilitation: A Case Study

Last month I was invited to write a guest blog on Plinths and Platforms about load monitoring and rehabilitation.  It included an overview of Banister’s Fitness-Fatigue concept, the acute:chronic workload ratio and how it can be incorporated into the Return to Play (RTP) decision.  You can find that post HERE but…

Is Return to Play from Hamstring Injuries in Applied Practice Evidence Based?

Whilst generally viewed as a somewhat avoidable soft tissue injury, hamstring strain injuries continue to plague the epidemiology in team sports.  There are an endless amount of statistics in the literature regarding their prevalence but perhaps most worryingly of all are the recent findings from Professor Jan Ekstrand’s European football…

Expert Speaker Series: Kristian Thorborg on Prevention of Groin Injuries in Sport

Dr Thorborg is an Associate Professor and Physiotherapist based at the Sports Orthopaedic Research Centre.  He has special interests in knee, hip and groin injuries and presented on ‘The Prevention of Groin Injuries in Sport’. Understanding the Clinical Entity Groin pain presents itself in a number of different clinical entities…

Expert Speaker Series: Ben Serpell on ACL Injuries in High Performance Sport

Ben is currently the Athletic Performance Coach at the Brumbies, acting as the link between the medical and performance teams.  He also has experience working in rehabilitation at Port Adelaide FC (AFL) and Gloucester Rugby.  His current research focus is on improving the prevention of ACL injuries, seeing as though…

Expert Speaker Series: Anthony Shield on Hamstring Strain Injuries

The second post in this ‘Expert Speaker’ series is on the discussion with Dr Anthony Shield from the Queensland University of Technology and the QUT-ACU Hamstring Injury Group. Dr Shield discussed his current research interests, most notably investigating why there is such a high incidence of hamstring recurrence as well as developing…