Load management

Load management is the practice of adjusting how much an athlete plays or trains, resting them for a game, capping minutes, or easing a training session, based on monitored workload rather than waiting for an injury to force the decision. It became widely discussed in professional basketball, where teams began sitting healthy star players in select regular-season games, but the underlying idea applies across sports.

Decisions are informed by data such as minutes played, distance covered and high-speed running from player tracking data, schedule factors like back-to-back games, and recovery signals such as heart rate variability, often combined into a workload or injury-risk score. This differs from resting a player who is already injured, which is reactive treatment rather than a preventive plan built on data.

Teams adopt load management because cumulative fatigue and overtraining are linked to higher injury rates, and protecting a valuable player's availability across a season or career can matter more than any single game. It is a source of tension with broadcasters and fans, since ticket holders and television audiences can find a healthy star sitting out unsatisfying, and there is genuine debate over how well any given workload model actually predicts injury versus simply reflecting caution.