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At Endeavor, we really pride ourselves on constantly looking for better ways to develop our athletes. All of our coaches continuously look for cutting edge information on program design, more effective exercises, nutrition, recovery strategies, and injury prevention (amongst others). Working alongside such passionate people is what makes my job so much fun to do.  Is this development? One of the things he said that really caught my attention was (to paraphrase) that in today’s athletic development systems, competitive workloads have replaced training workloads. Think about it. Add up the total time athletes spend practicing and training in a given month. Add up the total time athletes spend playing games. In previous athletic development models, a ratio of preparation: competition would likely be AT LEAST 5:1, meaning athletes would spend 5 hours of preparation (practice and training) for every 1 hour of competition. Now this ratio is significantly closer to 1:1, if not 1:2. Concomitant with this shift in competition emphasis, we’ve seen a drastic increase in the amount of burnout amongst high school athletes and an UNACCEPTABLE increase in the number of non-contact and overuse injuries. To address the former, this means that when athletes should be entering their best years, they’re so burnt out from the non-stop competitive nature of their sport that they give it up. This is tragic.
The Cause of Overuse Injuries
The increase in overuse injuries is related to what I think of as “tissue stress accumulation”. Simply, this means that the stresses placed across tissues within your body (muscle, tendon, ligament, etc.) accumulate over time, ESPECIALLY if special attention isn’t paid to recovery. When I was in San Jose, John Pallof (a brilliant physical therapist) said he thought one of the reasons groin strains, hip flexor strains and sports hernias were so much more prevalent now is because people are training more than ever before. John noted that the training is absolutely necessary for the prevention of a host of other injuries, but he alluded to a great point: With the increase in competitions both within a season and across multiple seasons (Issurin) and the necessary increase in training (Pallof), our body’s just aren’t given the time to recover that they need. This reality is exemplified by the fact that almost ZERO attention is paid to recovery and improving soft-tissue quality. Take Home Message There are three things you should take from this (and pass along to everyone you know and love): 1) As a community, everyone in sports needs to ease up on the competition and put a greater emphasis on practices with components of skill development. It’s okay to slow down practice and focus on individual skills. In fact, it’s paramount for development. 
It's okay if every practice doesn't end with athletes looking like this!
2) From a training standpoint, the goal is to get the maximum benefit from the minimum amount of training. This comes back to minimizing tissue stress accumulation and highlights the fatal flaw in the “more is better” idea. This focus underlies the design of all our athletic development programs at Endeavor. It’s why we sometimes use 2 sets instead of 3, why we tell athletes to lift lighter weights on certain sets, and why we dial back our strength work significantly when it’s time to really hammer home conditioning. Maximum results, minimum stress. That’s the goal. 3) Lastly, EVERY athlete should be actively pursuing improved soft-tissue quality. I recently heard someone say that athletes ignoring performance-limiting factors (such as poor soft-tissue quality) are essentially driving with the brakes on. At Endeavor, we address soft-tissue quality by having our athletes go through a self-myofascial release circuit before they do their dynamic warm-up, which uses foam rollers, tennis balls, and medicine balls to break up knots and adhesions within the muscle (taking the breaks off). These implements can help restore normal muscle extensibility and fluid motion in young athletes and help maintain tissue quality in older athletes.  Endeavor's Manual Therapist Network If you’re reading this and you’re unfamiliar with the work I’m referring to, I highly recommend you contact one of the 4 professionals below and schedule an appointment. Don’t wait until you (or your players) are hurt before you take an active role in improving your soft-tissue quality and start to focus on recovery! Craig Bohn Dr. Anthony Lafferty Hockessin Athletic Club Lafferty Family Chiropractic 100 Fitness Way 402 Commerce Lane Hockessin, DE 19707 Suite 114 Parke Place Blvd #D (302) 239-6688 (856) 768-7737 cbohn@hachealthclub.com Dr. Michael Tancredi Dr. Mark Kemenosh Tancredi Chiropractic Glen Oaks Health and Spine 600 Reed Road, Suite 101 3 Jefferson Drive Broomall, PA 198008 Laurel Springs, NJ 08021 (610) 353-9400 (856) 228-3100
To your continued success,
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