The design of any strength and conditioning programme would be insufficient without attention being paid to all features of safety in training, including safety of training methods, individual exercises, sequence of exercises, intensity, volume, time under tension and recovery periods.
An intellectually structured training programme is worthless if it causes injury to the athlete.
Injuries can be caused by accident or through overtraining. Accidents often lie outside the direct control of the athlete and arise unexpectedly in the environment.
Overtraining is completely in the hands of the athlete and may be avoided if they acknowledge that it may be caused in two ways:
Overuse - Excessive Loading with regard to duration or volume.
Overload - An Extremely heavy load or intensity of exercise.
Overtraining can be avoided if the athlete and coach learns to plan, log and monitor the volume and intensity.
This leads us to conclude that:
1) Injury via overtraining is often an accumulative process.
2) The most recent exercise may be the final spark that sets off the injury.
3) Injuries can be the result of too much, too soon.
4) Injuries may be caused by an insufficient warm up.
5) Every Athlete responds to exercise differently.
6) Accidents do happen.
7) Cause and Effect are not directly related.
8) Injuries depend on the overall context including the lifestyle of the athlete (e.g. tight hips from a sedentary job or not enough sleep for recovery etc).
