Jump landing & resilience

How Many Hours a Week Is Too Much?

Most parents ask whether their athlete is training enough.

Almost nobody asks the other question.

The number

Researchers looking at overuse injuries in young athletes found something you can hold in your head without a spreadsheet.

Athletes training more hours per week than their age in years had higher odds of a serious overuse injury.

A thirteen-year-old training sixteen hours a week is carrying more than a thirteen-year-old body is built to absorb. A sixteen-year-old training sixteen hours is closer to the line.

It is not a law. It is a flag.

Why it holds up

Overuse injuries are not bad luck. They are the arithmetic of load arriving faster than tissue can adapt.

The same body of work found that the highest-risk profile is a young athlete in one sport, training year-round for more than eight months, with little unstructured play. Specialisation itself tracks with the injuries — and with worse sleep and higher fatigue through the season.

Volleyball parents feel this every spring. The athlete who looked sharp in November is sore, slow and flat by March. Nothing dramatic happened. The hours just kept arriving.

What to count

Everything, not just club.

Club practice. Tournaments. Open gyms. School season. Private lessons. Position clinics. Beach in the summer. The training that happens because a friend asked.

Families almost always undercount, because each item looks small on its own.

What to do with this

Add up one honest week. Not a typical week — this week.

Compare it to her age. If it is well over, you have found something worth a conversation, and you have found it before her knees found it for you.

Then look at the ratio the research also flags: organised sport versus free play. When structured training is more than twice the unstructured time, that is another signal.

The framework worth keeping

Hours should not outrun years. When they do, something has to give — and it is usually the athlete, at the least convenient moment of the season.

This article supports our deeper guide: Jump landing & resilience.