What is important to know about training?
When your child perform activities of any sort, that aren’t just for fun, there is always a training effect that is stimulated. This means that each athletic session they do should produce a short-term and long-term training effect.
Short term training can produce effects such as increased heart rate or shortness of breath or muscle fatigue. This will normally improve once they have stopped the training session. However, the long-term fitness effects for all the above occurs when they perform repeated sessions and gradually get faster, less tired, and stronger.
One of the main aspects of training, and for the body to reap the effects of a good session, is that they recover well. Recovery allows the body to build on the areas that have fatigued in the session and ultimately it’s the time that their bodies become stronger.
The problem arises when they have lots of training sessions, day in and day out, this means that they don’t completely recover and as a result, the body and mind start to burn out. This is called overtraining or overreaching.
What is overtraining?
Imagine your child has a hockey session on a Monday and it’s a hard match play session that lasts 1.5 hours. They feel exhausted after. The next day they wake up tired and stiff, but then have to play a netball match at school.
Repeated hard sessions with inadequate recovery will have the effect of actually making them perform worse. This can also make them prone to illness, injury and ultimately may lead to burn out and disinterest in the sport.
Perceived Rate of Exertion (PRE)
One way to measure how hard your child is training is by measuring the Perceived Rate of Exertion (PRE). This is a scale of 0-10 and indicates how hard they felt they worked in the session.
Let’s take the big hockey match, for example, they probably feel that’s a 10/10 in perceived rate of exertion. This then gives you an idea of how long they should recover for and what kind of session they should be doing the next day.
So, after the big match, perhaps they should have a day off or do a drills session that could be closer to a 3/10 in perceived rate of exertion. Working out what they are doing in one week can start to give you information on how much their body can cope with.
Another golden rule is that they shouldn’t be doing more hours of a sport than their age. This means if your child is 10 years old they should be doing less than 10 hours of sport in a week.
Signs of over training
Some signs of over training to look out for include:
• Not excited about their sport/training.
• Becoming stressed easily about their performance land playing sports.
• They seem to always be sore or have lingering injuries/pains.
• Their sleep pattern has changed or become irregular.
• Even if they do sleep, they don’t feel rested.
• Craving more sugar and carbs then they used to.
• Getting sick a lot or sickness lingers.
• They’ve hit a performance plateau or performance has started to decline.
How to recover after exercise
Sleep
An average young athlete should be sleeping 10 hours per night. A well rested sleep is vital for a good recovery. Noting how many hours your child has slept and how rested they feel can help you monitor how tired they are getting.
Active recovery
This can include soft tissue massage, gentle exercise like swimming or stretching, and has been shown to be beneficial for muscle recovery.
Nutrition
Making sure they eat something within half an hour of training, not necessarily a big meal but a bar or protein snack, and a drink, is a great way to refuel after a session.
Cold showers
Having a shower with 10 seconds hot water by and 10 seconds of cold water, even just on the legs if they are tired, can help the next day.
Ways to monitor your training
• Perceived rate of exertion – measure this after each session and let this dictate which sessions are the most important.
• Heart rate – measure their heart rate every morning before they get out of bed to get an average. If this starts to creep up it could be a sign that they are tired and more likely to fall ill.
• Don’t train if they are ill or unwell.
• Sleep – encourage 10 hours of sleep as a minimum.
• Allow for time off training if they are taking exams or stressed.
Finally, watch out for aches and pains
If your child finds they are getting aches and pains during training, which tends to go away after, this could be a sign of over training. It’s important they start listening to their body.
If sport is a big part of your child’s life and they want to keep playing, even compete to a professional level, then it’s important to start considering effective training to ultimately avoid burnout or injuries that could impact their progression.
Sometimes we need some help so get in touch sooner than later!
For more information visit www.puresportsmed.com, or if you’d like to speak to a member of the clinical team, why not take advantage of our free 15-minute consultation to see if we are the right team to support you and your young athlete.
