The thresholds worth knowing
None of these are precise laws. They are practical guardrails drawn from cohort data, and they are far better than the usual approach of having no number at all.
- Hours of organised sport per week should not routinely exceed the athlete's age in years.
- Week-on-week increases should stay under roughly 30%.
- At least one full day a week completely off organised sport.
- One to two months a year away from the main sport, ideally split into blocks.
Count everything
Overload is usually invisible because it is distributed. School PE, school team training and fixtures, club training and matches, county or district sessions, private coaching and a gym programme all draw on the same body and the same recovery capacity.
Write a single weekly schedule on one page, in hours. It takes ten minutes and it is the highest-value thing a parent can do.
Early warning signs
These typically appear before the injury does, which makes them far more useful than waiting for pain.
- Persistent morning stiffness or niggles that move around the body.
- Performance plateauing or declining despite training more.
- Mood changes, irritability, or reluctance to attend sessions.
- Disturbed sleep, or being exhausted at school.
- Frequent minor illness or slow recovery from it.
- Loss of appetite, or weight change during a growth phase.
High-risk periods
- Pre-season, especially after a long break.
- Tournament weekends and fixture congestion.
- The transition to a new age group or a higher level.
- Rapid growth spurts.
- Exam periods, when sleep and recovery drop while training continues.
A simple monitoring routine
Once a week, ask three questions: how many hours of organised sport did they do, how did they sleep, and where are they sore? Record it on one line. Once a month, measure their height.
Patterns emerge quickly, and in most families the intervention that follows is not dramatic. It is usually one session removed, one earlier bedtime, and holding volume steady for a fortnight.
The balance to strike
Doing too little has costs too: undertrained young athletes are less prepared for the demands of matches and are not developing physical qualities during the years when they respond best. The aim is not minimal load, it is appropriate load, progressed gradually, with recovery built in.