One of the reasons (read excuses) we are hearing from more and more international coaches is about fatigue, either through long seasons, crazy travel requirements or even ‘hotel fatigue’.

It is not a new topic and contrary to popular belief, it is not only limited to top, professional athletes either.

The purpose of the this column is to share experiences and studies I have done or attended in the past – not only to help you understand issues better, but also possibly to help you with your own training schedule and performance even if it is just with social groups or teams you are involved with, or perhaps a team or athletes you are coaching, or even if it is your son you are trying to help reach optimum levels of fitness and conditioning.

There are many things which contributes to burn-out or athletes not performing at their peak when it really counts. Also it is quite important in a contact sport like rugby where injuries are part and parcel of the sport.

The idea for any athlete or coach, at any level to adopt strategies and methods to limit risk, and in this case the risk of player burn-out, underperformance and injury.

Traditional training principles usually covers things we all already know. Things like intensity, frequency, periodisation and overload are all common in these theories and applications, but the one I want to discuss is ‘Dose-Response’ training.

It is best described in an analogy where when someone is sick, he will go to a doctor, the doctor will prescribe him medicine and the medicine will come with instructions on how to use and for how long.

The ‘Dose’ will be; ”Take 2 tablets twice a day for 5 days”. Now just in this you already have intensity, frequency and duration (some training principles). Now assuming the diagnosis and ‘Dose’ is right, the response (result) is you are cured from whatever you suffered from.

If you however deviate from the dose, only partial treatment is achieved and similarly, if you overdose there are other dangers that come into play – the ‘Dose-Response’ theory works in the same way.

The athlete is unfit, that is the ‘illness’. Training is the dose and performing at their or your potential is the response.

Now of course practically you need to assess your fitness and performance levels to ensure you are not ‘overdosing’ or training too little to achieve your desired results. This is more difficult to assess and will also differ from athlete to athlete as some might take longer to recover or rest than others, but can easily be judged or assessed if you keep a complete record of your training schedule and improvements as you go along.

Certain athletes will also put more emphasis on certain aspects of their body in respect to their position or characteristics of their sport and/or role in a team like a rugby team, so it is vital that you set benchmarks for yourself which is achievable, but also challenging.

(Position specific benchmarks for pro-rugby players is available on request)

Most importantly however is that you keep a detailed record of your training and performance over the period of your program.

Of course in setting goals you will need to ask yourself a couple of questions before you work out your schedule. Questions like these might include;

• If this is my training schedule over the next couple of months, what level of performance could I expect to achieve at that time?

• What training do I need to undertake to achieve a certain level of performance by a certain time?

• I need to peak on a certain date in the future. How should I plan my training to achieve this result?

• I have several competitions on various dates, how should I plan my training so as not to unduly compromise performance at any one of them?

• This has been my training schedule over the last several months. What will happen if I begin tapering now?

• In order to obtain optimum performance on a certain future date, when would be the best time to train hard, and when would it be wasteful?

Of course knowing what to do is quite difficult. Just saying I want to run 20km or be able to do 20 pull-up’s is not good enough – you need a more scientific approach and specific measure that has been devised is something called TRIMP (TRaining IMPulse). Here is some of the essential features to implement and follow the ‘Dose-Response’ theory;

• Regular training induces both fitness (which is good for performance) and fatigue (which is bad for performance). Of course, periods of no training cause both fitness and fatigue to decline.

• Good performance occurs when fitness is high and fatigue is low relative to each other.

• Fitness reacts more slowly than fatigue both when you train regularly and when you take a rest period. This, therefore, is the central principle around which an athlete’s training schedule is managed. Different athletes have different rates, which make things awkward for team training.

• To discern these rates for any individual requires a period of closely monitoring their training dosages and their performance levels. Analysis of the resultant data will yield these rates, but specialist software is required.

• Starting from an unfit state, heavy training initially produces a short-term decline in performance before improvements are seen.

• The time course for thorough adaptation stretches over several months, and a saturation level can be detected in many individuals after about five months.

• For optimal performance, a short period of abstaining from heavy training is essential. We know this as tapering and the resulting improvement we call peaking.

• Bouts of heavy training with longer rest periods between them seem to be better than training a lesser amount every day. Optimal performance is improved and the overtraining risk seems lessened.

• These ideas have been researched and proven in practice, but the effort required is not trivial. They have yet to produce a world champion!

To reach your peak at your desired time requires intense monitoring of training loads to ensure you are not under-prepared or unfit or that you over-extended yourself. The above however will give you a scientific base for monitoring and implementation.

The practical aspects of this should also be very clear. This means that you should;

• Develop a more scientific means of recording the volume of training that you undertake. (Position specific in-season, pre-season and off-season programs can also be requested)

• Keep this accurate and up-to-date.

• Use this to know when it’s been (or needs to be) heavy and know when it’s been (or needs to be) light. (You would usually have two different alternative training sequences or sessions which you could follow each day and depending on how your body recovered you can switch between the two.)

• Use it to plan both training sessions and rest intervals.

• Recognise that you cannot perform optimally week-in week-out.

• Recognise the importance of rest: between training sessions, just prior to competition events, and on occasions through the season.

So there you have it, maybe the ‘Dose-Response’ training method will help you, your team (or son) or just a social team you support, train and perform better – hey one of you might just become the next Bok coach and it’s my duty to help you prepare!

**The original theory and studies were tested and published by Prof R. Hugh Morton of the Massey University. The ‘Dose-Response’ theory was initially studied for individual athletes but through the courses I attended and materials now available it has been adapted to work in team sports like rugby. Additional references or material available on request.