Authors: Jacqueline Serrano¹, Ryan Belsito³,  and Brian Serrano^1,2

¹HPI Sports Medicine
²The University of Medical Sciences Arizona
³Left Coast Weightlifting Club, Director and Head Coach

Corresponding Author:
Dr. Brian Serrano
25162 Forbes Road Unit D, Laguna Niguel, CA 92866
Brianserrano171@gmail.com
818-926-7269

Dr. Jacqueline Serrano is the Clinic Director of HPI Sports Medicine. She is a practicing Sports Chiropractor and Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. Her field of expertise is in Sports Medicine and Functional Medicine.

Ryan Belsito currently serves as the director and head coach for Left Coast Weightlifting Club.

Dr. Brian Serrano is the Director of Rehabilitation and Performance at HPI Sports Medicine. He serves as an Assistant Professor at The University of Medical Sciences in Arizona in the Human Movement department. His current research interest include shoulder injuries in overhead athletes.

Calculating the Acute: Chronic Workload Ratio in a Female Olympic Weightlifter: A Case Study

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The idea of workload monitoring has become popular for athletes of all levels within the last 5 years with the advent of wearable technology. The purpose of this case study was to track the workload of a female Olympic weightlifter using a commercial fitness tracker..

Methods: A competitive, female Olympic Weightlifter wore a commercial fitness tracker (WHOOP) for 1 month and specifically during training session. Metrics like strain, average heart rate (HR), max HR, and duration of session were tracked. The acute: chronic workload ratio was also calculated based off her programming. Two sample t-tests were calculated between continuous variables and an ANOVA was performed between multiple continuous variables. Statistical significance was set as a p-value of (<0.05) using a confidence interval of 95%.

Results: The WHOOP fitness tracker was able to calculate differences between strain and HR average (p<.001), between HR average and HR max (p<.001), HR average and Workload (p<.001), and HR max and Workload (p<.003). ANOVA analysis showed a p-value of (<.001) between all continuous variables. The acute: chronic workload ratio over the 4 weeks ranged from (0.85-1.10).

Conclusion: Using wearable technology has become a cost-effective and efficient technique to track athlete workload even in the recreational population. This information can then be supplemented by acute: chronic workload ratios for more information. This can lead to clinicians, coaches, and athletes having higher quality information to improve sports performance and recovery while mitigating the risk of injury.

Applications in Sport: The WHOOP fitness tracker serves as a valid way to track internal workload in Olympic Weightlifters while the ACWR serves as a valid way to track external workload in Olympic Weightlifters.