The Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio in professional basketball players – is it a useful tool to load control?
Supporting Agencies
- Agencia Estatal Española de Investigación
Abstract
The increasing number of competitions in professional basketball has increased the interest in controlling player loads. The Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio is a very common tool for controlling load variation in professional teams. However, there are specific situations in which the ACWR is limited if no historical load values are available. The objective of this intervention was to analyze the workload of a professional basketball team through the ACWR, including a retrospective review of its curve for those scenarios in which it is desired to obtain accurate values of injury risk without players’ previous load values. A ten-player professional men’s team participated in this study. WIMU Pro brand inertial devices were used to quantify player load during training. The variables in this study were objective and subjective external load, acute load and chronic load. The results show the existence of injuries when the load is disproportionately increased and enters very high risk values. The incidence of injury is 20% when the risk values are exceeded. The study corroborates that the Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio is a practical and useful tool to monitor the load and its evolution throughout the mesocycle without further statistical analysis. In addition, it is useful to know when to control the players' loads from an eminently practical point of view, finding non-causal relationships with the appearance of injuries. A retrospective review of the values is recommended if it is desired to refine the injury risk value in those measurements where pre-intervention load rates are not available.
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References
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