Is Modern Day Sport Science Creating Better Athletes or More Fragile Ones ?

Modern sport science practitioners now have access to a greater range of tools and technologies than at any previous point in high-performance sport. High performing athletes are monitored extensively both internally and externally. GPS systems, session ratings of perceived exertion (sRPE), countermovement jump (CMJ) testing, wellness questionnaires, heart rate variability (HRV) along with advanced performance and recovery technologies have become standard practice within many high-performance football environments. The main aim of these systems is to reduce injury risk, optimise recovery and maximise performance.

From a sport science perspective, this progression seems logical. If there is more information available, then decision making should be improved and allow practitioners to manage athlete readiness more effectively. However, it’s not that simple. Despite significant investments in athlete support systems and technological advancements, injury rates across sports continue to remain high. Modern day sport science presents both significant opportunities and challenges. There has never been so much insight and detail into athletes external and internal readiness to inform the best practices. On the other hand, there is so much data available how do we determine what metrics matter? Is the modern day sport scientist now too data driven in decision making? Does this mean that we are over or under cooking our athletes? At the same time, concerns have been growing on athlete burnout, training tolerances and long-term athlete development becoming increasingly common. Having this extensive data available has raised some interesting questions. Are modern systems producing better athletes or have we created athletes who are becoming increasingly dependent on optimisation? The pursuit of optimisation may have blurred the line between supporting athlete development and overprotecting athletes from the stressors required to develop robustness.

There is a stigma that exists in media today around modern-day sport science particularly from retired professional footballers. Well known figures such as Roy Keane and Gary Neville insist that training isn’t hard enough, that players are cramping and breaking down more from an injury perspective. This has created a perception that players nowadays run less, don’t work as hard, can’t cope with the demands and are more protected by sport scientists. Is it true? Current physical performance data would suggest otherwise, with high intensity running demands continuing to increase across elite football. But there is a certainly scope to question whether players are potentially being under prepared in certain instances.

Load monitoring has become a major component of athlete management in modern sport. Practitioners will often use GPS metrics, internal and external load measures along with a variety of other assessments to monitor fatigue and load spikes. The primary purpose of these methods is often to reduce the risk of injury and improve training prescription. However, these monitoring tools are sometimes used as a protection mechanism for athletes meaning they are not always given enough of a stimulus for adaptation to occur. It is known that for adaptation to occur athletes need to be exposed to progressively increasing levels of stress and are allowed sufficient time to recover.

In many environments there appears to be a growing tendency to avoid sudden increases in training load entirely. This may be influenced by a fear that pushing athletes too hard will result in physical breakdown, leading practitioners to adopt increasingly conservative approaches to training exposure. From an academic perspective, this area remains controversial due to conflicting findings regarding the effectiveness of the acute chronic workload ratio (ACWR) as a predictor of injury risk. While Gabbett (2016) proposed that workload spikes may increase injury likelihood, subsequent work by Impellizzeri et al. (2020) questioned the methodological validity and practical application of this approach. These conflicting opinions can leave sport scientists unsure whether they should seek to push their athletes or whether that would increase their injury risk. However, while reducing excessive sudden spikes in workload may decrease short term injury risk, athletes still need exposure to demanding physical stressors if they are to tolerate the requirements of competition.

Athletes do not become physically robust through avoiding load. They become robust through repeatedly adapting to appropriate levels of stress over time. Unfortunately, congested fixture schedules in modern sport create a difficult balance between preserving athlete availability and exposing players to the physical demands necessary to drive adaptation and long-term robustness. For instance, there have been times when working in academy football where there may be back-to-back double game weeks, having to deal with four to five games across a fourteen-day period. In this situation how can we move the needle? Where are the athletic development opportunities? The focus in this case is likely less about excellence and more about surviving without significant injuries.

Injury prevention strategies have become a major focus within modern high-performance environments. In football specifically, practitioners frequently monitor sprint exposure, manage cumulative workloads and attempt to minimise unnecessary physical stressors. Is this approach injury prevention or simply just reduced training exposure? While these approaches are understandable, there may be unintended consequences. Football is a chaotic and physically demanding sport, where players are exposed to maximal sprinting and high intensity movements under fatigue. Therefore, reducing exposure to these actions within a training environment may create a mismatch between preparation and competition. Does this now mean that our athletes are under prepared to tolerate the demands of the game? It is definitely a possibility. The growing prevalence of hamstring injuries provides a practical example of this concept. Most hamstring injuries occur during high-speed running and sprinting actions, most of the research available suggests that weekly maximal sprint exposure may reduce injury risk (Edouard et al., 2022). If players are repeatedly protected from these exposures in a training week, then how can they be expected to tolerate them on a match day? The line between exposing athletes to sufficient stress and protecting them from excessive stress has become increasingly blurred within modern performance environments. This really challenges whether we expose our athletes to sufficient and appropriately targeted training demands over time.

Another consideration within modern sport science is the increasing reliance on objective data to guide decision making. Athlete readiness is now frequently assessed through wellness scores, heart rate variability, countermovement jump metrics and monitoring dashboards designed to provide practitioners with real-time feedback. While these technologies undoubtedly provide valuable information, there is a possibility that athletes and practitioners alike may become increasingly dependent on external metrics rather than developing an understanding of the athlete themselves. This raises an important question, is modern sport science at risk of reducing complex athletes into a collection of numbers and performance metrics?

Historically, athletes relied heavily upon recognising their own physiological responses to training and competition. Fatigue was often understood through personal awareness, experience and communication with coaches. Is a conversation with athletes no longer more impactful than the numbers? There is a risk that numbers may influence perception before athletes have an opportunity to interpret how they feel. For example, a player may arrive to training feeling physically prepared. However, if they are informed that their HRV score is below baseline or their CMJ performance has reduced slightly, this may unintentionally impact how they perceive their readiness. Equally, practitioners may become increasingly hesitant to expose athletes to physiological stress based on small fluctuations in performance metrics. The concern is not necessarily that data itself is problematic. The fear is that objective measures are gradually replacing coach judgement and athlete self-awareness. Data should ultimately support decision making rather than dictate it entirely. It’s important to realise athletes are not spreadsheets or dashboards they are complex individuals whose responses to training and competition rarely follow perfect trends.

Modern sports science has undoubtedly transformed athlete preparation and improved many aspects of performance development. Monitoring technologies, workload management systems and performance analytics have provided practitioners with valuable tools to support athlete health and reduce injury risk. Without these advancements, athlete preparation would likely be far less informed than it is today. Would there be even more occurrences of injuries?

However, optimisation and protection should not become confused with development itself. Athletes ultimately adapt through exposure to stress, variability and progressively increasing demands rather than through the complete removal of discomfort and uncertainty. The challenge for practitioners moving forward may not simply involve collecting more data or implementing additional interventions. Instead, it may involve finding the balance between protecting athletes from unnecessary risk and exposing them to the demands that create robust performers. Ultimately, creating better athletes may involve more than improving performance outcomes. It may require taking calculated risks to ensure athletes retain the robustness and adaptability needed to tolerate the demands of modern sport.

References:

1.     Edouard, P., Mendiguchia, J., Guex, K., Lahti, J., Prince, C., Samozino, P., & Morin, J.-B. (2022). Sprinting: a key piece of the hamstring injury risk management puzzle. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 57(1), bjsports-2022-105532. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2022-105532

2.     Gabbett, T. J. (2016). The Training—Injury Prevention Paradox: Should Athletes Be Training Smarter and harder? British Journal of Sports Medicine, 50(5), 273–280. https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/50/5/273

3.     Impellizzeri, F. M., Tenan, M. S., Kempton, T., Novak, A., & Coutts, A. J. (2020). Acute:Chronic Workload Ratio: Conceptual Issues and Fundamental Pitfalls. International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 15(6), 907–913. https://doi.org/10.1123/ijspp.2019-0864