Has the athlete trained enough to return to play safely? The acute:chronic workload ratio permits clinicians to quantify a player’s risk of subsequent injury.

The return to sport from injury is a difficult multifactorial decision, and risk of reinjury is an important component. Most protocols for ascertaining the return to play status involve assessment of the healing status of the original injury and functional tests which have little proven predictive ability. In the elite team setting, it is possible to quantify the loads we are expecting athletes to endure when returning to sport, so assessment of the acute:chronic workload ratio should be included in the return to play decision-making process.