D27 Load and Fatigue

Topic

This athlete's fatigue and training load diagnosis integrates mechanical, physiological, and psychological indicators to quantify both their final functional state and their risk of overuse injury—specifically the repetitive overload addressed by another model in this set.

The athlete's external load—measured by kilograms lifted, kilometers covered, or the number of impacts sustained—is combined with their internal load (measured via subjective perception of effort, heart rate, and lactate levels) to estimate their actual, final physiological stress.

Banister’s fitness-fatigue model—another model in this set addressing sports fatigue—predicts the athlete's final performance as the difference between accumulated positive adaptation and accumulated fatigue, modeling both as exponential responses to the training load.

Gabbett’s model uses the ratio between the athlete's recent acute load and accumulated chronic load to quantify injury risk: a ratio exceeding a specific critical value indicates a sudden increase in training load that the athlete cannot yet tolerate—an excessive load increase identified by another model in this set as the most well-documented risk factor for repetitive overload. A higher acute-to-chronic load ratio results in a correspondingly higher risk of injury for the athlete. Consequently, this model—launched with mechanical, physiological, and psychological indicators—allows for the detection of athlete fatigue in purely mechanical terms: through a drop in leg stiffness, an increase in ground contact time, a reduction in the reactive strength index, and an alteration in the ground reaction force pattern. Based on subjective perceived exertion, heart rate, lactate levels, satellite-derived distance and speed data, force platform readings, and accelerometer data, this diagnostic process determines the athlete's final accumulated training load, the acute-to-chronic workload ratio, the Banister model parameters, and the specific mechanical indicators that complete the model.

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