Tim Thompson, Head of Athletic Development, Discusses Managing Competing Workload Demands
At Taunton School, we passionately encourage students to engage in various sports from an early age, recognising the broad benefits of multi-sport participation. However, as young athletes mature, many face the challenge of narrowing their focus while juggling demanding schedules.
The challenge of working at a school with multiple talented students across a range of sports is helping them identify and structure their week. Some students may have up to three different coaches for one sport (school, club and academy), whilst also playing a number of other sports at school.
The Challenge of Overload
The “more is better” mindset often drives highly motivated students to push beyond their limits. This, alongside overlapping commitments, can lead to overuse injuries with inadequate recovery. Over the last seven years at Taunton School, overuse injuries have accounted for 48% of all documented injuries, with the most common injury site being the back (26%), knee (22%) and ankle (14%).
For motivated young athletes, the temptation to work hard all the time is all too great, which may mean potentially overdoing it. When we then add in Core PE, school games, and other physical activities, coupled with growth and maturation, injuries may be on the horizon. Additionally, the risk of injuries for female athletes is heightened due to structural and hormonal differences.
As coaches, we must ensure students balance doing too much and too little. Sport scholars are rewarded scholarships based on their sporting ability, future potential and personable traits. Thus, they are motivated to improve and reach the next level, while being in a new school environment, they are keen to impress. I am sure you have all heard the saying ‘availability is the best ability.’ Saturday fixtures are the highlight of the week for these performers, so ensuring they are well-rested and ready to go is all part of the puzzle. As a school with plenty of high performers, managing weekly training load is imperative in order to get the best out of our students.
Striking the Balance: A Holistic Approach
So, how do we manage this? At Taunton School, we take a holistic view and manage student load by asking individuals to input their school sports co-curricular activities and club/academy training into a purpose-designed weekly calendar to give an overview of their week. We then use a colour-coded system alongside to ‘traffic light’ their week.
· Green equates to a rest day or light training day
· Amber means a double training day
· Red is match day or up to three training sessions.
The colour coding system offers a clear visual representation of their weekly intensity, helping both students and coaches to identify potential overload. We aim to have at least one or two rest days a week.
Training load may vary week to week due to midweek fixtures or cup competitions; therefore, a sudden spike in load may increase. Acute rises to training load (15%) may increase the risk of injury (up to 50%) without sufficient recovery. We ask students to write down all their training across the week in advance and then use the colour coding system to help them visually identify the intensity of their week. From here, we can identify students who need support in managing their week, but it also sparks conversations with students about how best to manage their training. Working through their timetable, followed by a short conversation, can make a game-changing difference to their performance and recovery. This can then lead to further conversations with the Head of Sport to allow individuals to rest in certain sessions to ensure they are having periods of recovery, especially those who may be on academy pathway sport.
We also allow students who may be engaging in a high volume of load, such as swimmers who swim for both school and club, to utilise their games sessions to complete academic work instead, helping them stay on top of their work and to avoid unnecessary overloading.
Weekly sports department meetings are instrumental in planning around demanding periods, such as midweek fixtures, tournaments or exam weeks, and we discuss how we can best support those students and teams to prevent too much overloading physically and mentally, as well as utilising recovery sessions as a way to reduce training volume. From a wellbeing perspective, this information is then passed on to the student’s tutor who can further initiate conversations to align both academics and sport to help maintain the balance and ensure the student’s wellbeing is at the heart of everything.
Parents play a pivotal role in supporting balanced schedules, too. We ensure consistent messaging and alignment across school and home environments by keeping them informed. For students involved in academies or external clubs, early communication with external coaches helps manage workload collaboratively, ensuring breaks are planned without the feeling of guilt or misunderstanding.
Our ultimate goal is to empower students to recognise and manage their schedules independently. By regularly engaging them in discussions about their weekly plans and recovery needs, we are fostering self-awareness and encouraging lifelong skills in load management. Already, we are seeing progress, with students taking proactive steps to balance their commitments.
Effective load management is more than just preventing injuries, it is about supporting overall wellbeing. By integrating sports staff, tutors and parents into the process, we create a unified approach that prioritises our students’ physical, mental and academic health. Through this collective effort, we aim to ensure our young athletes remain healthy, motivated and ready to perform at their best.
At Taunton School, we believe that availability is truly the best ability. By prioritising balance and collaboration, we are laying down the foundations for sustained success in sports and beyond. Visit https://www.tauntonschool.co.uk/explore/co-curricular/sport/ to learn more about our sport provision.
[Source: Collaborate Sports]