Internal load

As all we know, the work that athletes make during training or match can be defined in terms of Internal and external load. I don’t dwell on the explanation of these concepts but I would like to spend some words on the evaluation of what really interests us:  the internal load, what we change in the athlete’s organism, his/her individual response to train. The assess of this parameter has been always subjected to several debates, in particular on the use or not of some methodologies: some people use the heart rate analysis, others the blood lactate, the GPS, or others new and expensive technologies like video camera match analysis. First of all I would like to underline the fact that by now the “famous” heart rate frequencies as a perfect index to evaluate the internal load are losing their value in favour of other technologies like GPS, capable of calculating the acceleration of athletes; following the last scientific researches,  the investigation of acceleration seems to give a more exactly parameter to assess the energy consumption (Di Prampero et al.).

After that I would like to bring your attention on the fact that we do not always have expensive technologies like gps (which also not always receive the satellite signal in our sports hall) or telemtry heart rate monitors, thus I think that the best way to assess internal load, validated, cheap and quick is the investigation of perceived exertion.

The Borg’s scale is the most famous scale about the perceived exertion and it has been demonstrated its close relationship with real internal load. I believe that the detection of RPE with the CR10 or CR100 scale is convenient to modulate and monitor training sessions and matches, to have always an index about what our players are doing, to calculate in this way the training load.

Personally with the CR100 scale I also use the TQR scale for the assess of the recovery and the VAS scale for muscle soreness evaluation, administering these to my athletes in a fast, cheap and simple way. Obviously, to have true data, the administration parameters of the scales validated in the scientific studies on this topic must respect and overall use the paper format and character of write used in this studies, otherwise the method loses its efficacy.

In conclusion, in my opinion, it is better to return to the old pen and paper rather than having millions of data given by an expensive technology that probably isn’t so precise respect its cost.

I invite you to express opinions on this subject

Greetings