Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center

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Information about project titled 'Methodological differences in analysing the relationship between the Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio and injury'

Methodological differences in analysing the relationship between the Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio and injury

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Project status: Ongoing
Project manager: Torstein Dalen-Lorentsen
Supervisor(s): Thor Einar Andersen, Ben Clarsen, John Bjørneboe
Coworker(s): Morten Wang Fagerland, Markus Vagle, Kevin Nordanger Martin, Michael Kleppen

Description

Background The acute chronic workload ratio (ACWR) is widely used to evaluate the relationship between training load and injury. However, both ACWR and injury can be defined in many ways, and how these methodological choices affect the relationship is unclear.

Methods We followed 86 elite youth footballers for 105 days and collected their daily health status and training load. We analysed the relationship between training load and injury using a range of different definitions of ACWR and injury. We calculated ACWR using a 21-day and 28-day chronic period, coupled and uncoupled calculations, exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) and rolling average (RA). All ACWR data were categorized into three bins (low, medium and high) using pre-defined categories and z-scores, and we compared medium to high, medium to low and low to high. We defined the outcome in three ways: “all health problems”, “all injuries”, and “new non-contact injuries”. A total of 108 separate random-effects logistic regression analyses were performed.

Aim To investigate whether different results emerge when different definitions of ACWR and injuries are used on the same data.