What Does Load Tolerance Mean?
Load tolerance has recently become a popular term amongst physiotherapists and other rehab professionals.
Sometimes, as professionals, we are guilty of forgetting that terms like these are obvious to us but not always clear to others when hearing them for the first time.
So what does load tolerance mean?
Load:
Every activity that we do throughout the day puts a load/stress/force through the body. This could be the whole body or just a particular area of the body.
This could come in the form of:
- a muscle engaging to create tension
- soft tissue (muscle/ligament/tendon/etc) being stretched
- a part of the body being exposed to repetitive impact
- raising of our heart rate through exercise
These loads can be very small or alternatively very large. The load could be related to sitting upright for several hours at a computer or it could be related to lifting a heavy plant pot in the garden.
Tolerance:
Is putting load/stress/force through the body good or bad for us? Neither! The type of questions we should be asking are:
- Can my body tolerate the load being placed upon it?
- What could I do to increase the load it can tolerate?
The body’s ability to deal with load is constantly changing. That change is dependent on the activities we have carried out leading up to a particular point in time.
The Circle of Tolerance
Sudden Increase in Activity
If you suddenly introduce an activity that you haven’t done in a long time your body won’t be able to adjust quickly enough to the demands of that activity. This will likely result in pain.
Period of No Activity
If you stop doing an activity your body will slowly lose the ability to tolerate the load that the activity puts upon it. After a period of time, if you then reintroduce the very same activity, due to having slowly lost tolerance, the likely result would be pain and sensitivity.
How to Manage an Injury
Whilst an area is painful it is unable to tolerate as much load as it previously could. Now activities that were never a problem are now unable to be tolerated, potentially resulting in further sensitivity.
It is worth noting here that pain doesn’t necessarily mean damage. Most of the time tissues within the body become sensitive and painful without being damaged. All that happens is that the particular tissue is exposed to more load than it can deal with and becomes sensitive as a result.
The best approach would be to maintain just enough loading that the area can tolerate to allow it to settle back down again. Then you would need to gradually increase the loading slowly, allowing the area time to adapt and become more tolerant.
You should then continue to load the tissue gradually to a point where it can tolerate more than what your desired task requires of it. This then gives you some breathing space and makes you more resilient as a result.
That being said, there are times where pain does mean damage. If you are unsure then seek medical advice.
Thank you to Adam Meakins for giving me permission to use his images in the blog. If you want to see more simple, practical, honest advice regarding physiotherapy and rehabilitation then please check out his website thesports.physio
An Example to Illustrate Load Tolerance
Let’s try to put this into some context to help your understanding further by using the activity of running as an example.
Sarah
Meet Sarah, a runner who has just signed up to a marathon. She has never run more than 10 miles before. Sarah does the sensible thing and follows a marathon training program which gradually increases her weekly mileage over 20 weeks. Her body slowly adapts to the small changes in overall load she experiences each week. This allows her to continually keep increasing how far she can run.
Sarah ran the marathon (26.2 miles) in her target time. Although she was understandably tired over the next few days, she did not experience any pain and recovered quickly.
Mike
Now meet Mike who signed up to the marathon as a dare 3 weeks before the big day. Once again he hadn’t run more than 10 miles before. He went on a few runs and managed to achieve 16 miles in those 3 weeks.
On the day he had run 18 miles and developed pain in the outside of his left knee. Being stubborn, as most runners are, he continued and dragged himself around the rest of the route. The next day he awoke and his knee was extremely sensitive (not damaged, just very painful). Now activities such as going up and down the stairs caused pain.
This lasted several weeks before he was able to even consider running for a bus let alone another running event.
6 Months Later
Now let’s go back to Sarah, who decided to take a break from running for 6 months. Flicking through a magazine she noticed another marathon coming up at the weekend.
Could she now run that marathon again given that she has already completed one successfully?
Unfortunately this is not a good idea. The tolerance to the loads and stresses that running demand from her will have slowly ebbed away. This would leave her tolerance level a long way below that which a marathon requires.
If she made the decision to go ahead with it she would likely suffer the same fate as Mike.
What Has Load Tolerance Got to do With Strength Training?
If you have never done any form of strength or resistance training in the past, you will need to gradually introduce it into your weekly routine to avoid aggravating any condition.
If you have a history of lifting weights when you were younger but have not done this in the last 10-20 years, guess what?!
Your body will have forgotten how to tolerate the loads you were lifting before, even if your mind hasn’t. You will need to slowly reintroduce strength training into your life.
Failing to give your body time to adapt to the new activity is likely to result in parts of your body becoming sensitive. Failing to re-evaluate your training plan is likely to result in day to day activities becoming painful.
Don't Blame the Strength Training
This isn’t the fault of the strength training and is not a reason to stop, as you may say to yourself ‘I tried lifting weights, it made me feel worse, it’s not for me’.
It’s because you did too much too soon and therefore you need to change your plan to account for this. If you find yourself in this position then please seek the help of a good local physiotherapist or personal trainer.
I assure you that the benefits of persevering with strength training far outweigh the negative experience that could occur by not using the right approach. The stronger and more efficient your muscles are, the more load they can absorb. The results is less force being transferred through to those structures that don’t absorb it so well.
18 Responses
What an interesting and very informative description! Thanks for explaining all of this
That’s OK, glad you found it useful.
This is so interesting! This is actually my first time hearing the term load tolerance. Thanks so much for all of the information you provided. It definitely gives me a lot to think about.
Thanks for commenting. Hope it was useful!
I did not know much about load tolerance before. Thank you for sharing this information!
That’s OK, thanks for commenting. It’s not a mainstream term but important to understand.
Wow, I learned a lot from reading this! I am just getting back into strength training now, so this is very helpful information!!
Good to hear you’re getting back to strength training. Really hope this has helped.
Great info! Load tolerance is a topic that isn’t talked about much.
Thank you!
This is a great post and so well explained! I understood the concept from my own training, but I am sure it will help others who have not heard of load tolerance before!