Why Load Management Is Failing the NBA: A Training Science Perspective

How misapplied fatigue metrics, incomplete feedback loops, and an outdated definition of reactive strength have led the NBA into a Doom Loop.

Celtics' Jayson Tatum is helped off the court after suffer an Achilles tendon reactive strength rupture in playoff game against the Knicks. Frank Franklin II/AP Source

Load Management Is Failing the NBA

Here we are in the NBA playoffs, and once again, we see another professional league undergoing a reactive strength problem. Two significant Achilles tendon ruptures in fifteen days. Steph Curry limited with a hamstring strain.

At Absolute, we don’t see this as coincidence. We see it as a systemic failure—a failure to understand and manage reactive strength, a complex special strength the NBA hasn’t figured out yet with their current load management strategy.

Load Management Through the Lens of Training Science

We’re going to examine the NBA’s load management strategy—but through the lens of Training Science¹, not through the optics of former players like Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson who criticize it for harming both the game and league. This isn’t a conversation about league image—that is not of interest to us. It’s a conversation about physical outcomes and implementing an appropriate strategy to optimize athlete performance over the course of a season.

At Absolute, we disagree with the current definition of reactive strength and define reactive strength differently. As a result, we train and treat it differently. That difference changes everything—from how you measure it, to how you manage it, and ultimately, how you mitigate the reactive strength injuries we see unfolding in real time.

What We Know About the NBA’s Strategy

Let’s be clear: we don’t know the internal specifics of each team’s load management protocols as it differs from organization to organization. However, here is the assumption we are working with:

NBA teams routinely rest healthy players to reduce fatigue and prevent injury.²

Here’s the simplified logic behind it:

• Fatigue increases reactive strength injury risk.

• Fatigue is detected using markers like the Reactive Strength Index (RSI).

• When RSI drops from a standardized norm, the player is rested.

We are not arguing that resting players doesn’t reduce short-term injury risk. If an athlete doesn’t play, they obviously can’t get injured—but then again there is the NFL’s Deshaun Watson…

The issue as we see it, is that resting players in response to RSI drops contributes directly to the reactive strength problem. It completely deloads the biological side of reactive strength, while the top down fatigued CNS recovers over time and the neural network of absolute strength scales.³

In other words, the NBA’s incomplete definition of reactive strength has generated a Rest & The Reactive Strength Doom-Loop—resting until players “feel good,” or are able to output a qualifying RSI, only to watch as their soft tissues become injured as the demands at the level of competition—changing direction, accelerating or decelerating—create a downside asymmetry.

The Flawed Logic of RSI-Driven Rest

At Absolute, we view RSI primarily as a measure of neural output. It is not a specific measure of the quality of connective tissue behavior. Therefore, when RSI drops, it reflects central nervous system behavior that could be fatigue—but what it is not is a measure of the degradation of the biological infrastructure—it simply cannot be.

Stated again:

When RSI drops, it primarily reflects central nervous system behavior—the neural network of absolute strength—not the degradation of connective tissue. It is an indicator of the top-down component of reactive strength—not the bottom-up biological component we see rupturing in cases like Jayson Tatum.

NBA Staffs Should be Assessing the Bottom-Up Element of Reactive Strength

It is our belief that to more accurately assess the behavior of the bottom-up element of reactive strength and utilize the findings as a diagnostic feedback loop into the status of the connective tissue architecture—the neuromuscular barriers must be removed. Thus, it is our argument that the RSI isn’t going to give the performance staff of any NBA organization enough information to provide an accurate signal as to how to manage the connective tissue injuries that have been occurring in the playoffs.

From a practitioner perspective assessing the current and immediate status of the connective tissue can be done using manual assessment. Referred to as the tissue tension assessment⁴, it is the only way to evaluate how connective tissue self-organizes as the variable of length is scaled into the connective tissue network. That organization can and should be felt by a skilled performance practitioner. Systems should be understood by simple guidelines or rules. Although the connective tissue net is large and complex, the simple application of the length/tension assessment provides extremely valuable information to the practitioner about the foundational behaviour of the larger special strength of reactivity.

Anatomically specific tissue tension assessments should be a regular component of the NBA’s Load Management strategy.

Our practical experience at Absolute coupled with the rising count of Achilles ruptures and reactive strength injuries in the NBA—we’re willing to bet that these tissue specific assessments are not part of the NBA’s Load Management strategy. It means many NBA organizations are missing a critical component of the tissue injury conundrum as they are only evaluating one side of reactive strength equation: the neurological component.

It is important to reiterate the ecological nature of high performance. Outputs are paramount to athlete success, however when they decline, there are often many factors, a major one being the quality of the total internal ecosystem. A decline in output will always be preceded or accompanied by a change within the internal environment.

As we have written about in the past, fatigue, combined with a progressively decreasing neurological output represents our definition of neurological stagnation. Unfortunately neurological stagnation is an outward sign of underlying biological accommodation.

Without a tissue tension test findings, NBA staffs do not know if the bottom up biological tissue is accommodating to the court and away from optimal length tension behaviors. If that is the case, then rest is going to put the NBA athlete right into a reactive strength doom-loop—one we are watching in real time during the most demanding phase of the season, the playoffs.

Reactive Strength or Reversal Strength?

To make matters worse, we’d argue RSI is closer to a reversal strength test than a true measure of reactive strength. Why? Because it completely ignores the bottom-up element—the biological ecosystem.

Here’s the logic error we believe is driving this injury trend:

RSI drops → CNS is fatigued → Player rests → Connective tissue deloads → Athlete returns with CNS not fatigued → Increased neural output into suboptimal connective tissue → Reactive strength injury

Simple chain of logic where fatigue is taken into account but the biological tissue—the one being injured—is not.

Note: We are not in the NBA, we are on the outside looking in. If this chain of logic is wrong—simply, leave a comment and give us feedback. Let us know what you are doing to assess the connective tissue architecture. We have received feedback that one organization is aware of the reactive strength problem and is using imaging on connective tissue as a feedback loop. Imaging still does not assess the behavior of the tissue. So our thesis at this point in time remains unchanged. If we get information that shows these tissue specific assessments are being performed—then obviously we will update the article to inform readers this is not an issue.

Deloading Was a Soviet Nervous System Tactic, Not Biological