Is my child training too much?
Probably not "too much," but possibly too much, too soon. Injury happens when load outgrows capacity, and capacity drops with poor sleep, poor food, a growth spurt, illness or exam stress. The same training that was safe last week can be unsafe this week. Track those inputs, not just the hours.
Your child's injury isn't bad luck: it's a maths problem
Here's the line I use with the parents I coach: an overuse injury isn't bad luck, it's a maths problem. On one side of the equation is load: everything the body has to absorb. On the other side is capacity: how much that body can currently absorb. When load climbs above capacity, tissue starts to fail. That's the whole model.
The mistake almost everyone makes is treating capacity as fixed. It isn't. Capacity is depressed by inadequate sleep, by poor nutrition, by a growth spurt, by illness, by exam stress. So the same training load can be perfectly safe one week and genuinely unsafe the next: same sessions, same coach, same child, different capacity. That's why "but he's always trained this much" doesn't protect anyone.
The three things to track at home
You can't see your child's capacity, but you can watch the three inputs that move it most: sleep, food, and growth. If sleep is short, meals are skipped, or they've just shot up a shoe size, capacity is down, and the training load that was fine last month now needs pulling back.
One note on food: the risk isn't just "not eating enough." It's a mismatch between energy in and energy out: what researchers call low energy availability. When a young athlete trains hard but doesn't eat enough to cover the cost, the body quietly starts rationing: slowing growth, weakening bones, impairing concentration. You don't need to count calories. You need to notice if training has gone up but appetite seems to have stayed the same or dropped.
A simple tool helps bring these three inputs together. Before training, ask your child to rate three things from 1 to 5, where 1 is on the floor and 5 is fresh: how their body feels, how their energy is, and how their head is (school, stress, mood). Average the three. 4 and above means train as planned. 2 to under 4, keep the session but take the top end off: technique, skill and steady work are fine, and what comes off is the flat-out stuff, maximal sprints and all-out efforts. Below 2 means rest today. (Sports science usually uses a 1 to 10 scale for how hard a session was; this 1 to 5 readiness scale is a deliberate simplification, and it runs the other way on purpose, because higher should mean better.) The three-question scale is adapted from Kids Back 2 Sport, a UK resource for paediatric sports physiotherapy. It takes ten seconds and it turns a vague worry into a decision.
Count the load across everything, not just sessions
Most parents count the visible training and stop there. But the body doesn't know the difference between a session, a match, a PE lesson and three hours in the park: it's all load. So count it all.
This is where school holidays catch people out. In term time a child might walk around 15,000 steps a day; over the holidays that can drop to around 5,000. Then school returns and activity roughly triples overnight, and if a new sport season starts in the same week, you've stacked a sudden spike on top of a fresh season. That's a genuinely risky combination, and it's invisible if you're only counting the obvious sessions.
Injury usually doesn't come from heavy load. It comes when load goes past what the body can handle at that moment.
And that moves. Capacity isn't a constant: it shifts with sleep, illness, what's happening at school, a growth spurt, a break over the holidays. The same session is fine one week and too much three weeks later.
So the question isn't "can my child handle this?" It's "can they handle it this week?"
What to watch for are the jumps. Not a session that's slightly harder, but a week that looks nothing like the weeks before it: back after the holidays, two clubs at once, a training camp, a tournament weekend straight after a week of nothing. The body adapts well to load it has seen before. What causes trouble is what arrived too fast.
Training too much isn't the biggest risk. Training too much, too soon: that's the one that hurts them.
Why "too soon" is the real danger
When a child loads a bone hard, the body responds by laying down new bone to cope. But that new bone takes several weeks to harden. Load straight through that window, before it's caught up, and you risk a stress fracture. A bone bruise is often the warning shot: the body telling you it's behind on the repair.
So the question isn't really "is my child doing too much?" It's "is my child's capacity keeping up with what I'm asking of it?" Build load patiently, protect the three inputs, and respect the spikes. The kids who get hurt are rarely the ones doing the most: they're the ones who did too much, too fast, with capacity already down.
The Recovery Check
A 90-second check on the three inputs that move your child's capacity, sleep, food and growth, with a simple read on whether today's a hard day or a light one.
Help us build it →This guide is for understanding and decisions at home: it isn't a diagnosis. If your child has pain that persists, worsens, or worries you, see a doctor or physiotherapist.