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Full to the brim – Games

Learning game

Full to the brim

The load cup

Everything that acts on you flows into the same cup: stress, sleep, nutrition, training, daily life. What matters is not the single load but the sum – and whether enough drains away again. And the cup itself is not a fixed size.

  • 1Grey blocks are stress. They cannot be blocked and sink into the cup as lumps.
  • 2Everything else can be dragged sideways. The closer to a lump of stress something takes effect, the stronger it is – the factor appears above the block while you drag.
  • 3Tap green blocks (everyday movement): they fly to the nearest lump of stress and dissolve it. Let blue ones through (recovery) – they lower the level.
  • 4Press and hold amber blocks (training) and release inside the green window of the dose gauge. Well dosed, the cup grows; overdosing and lasting strain make it shrink.
  • 5Nutrition comes in four shapes (protein, carbohydrate, fat, fibre). Letting all four through makes a balanced plate. Tap red blocks – ultra-processed, fend them off.
  • 6Points are earned mainly inside the green band. If the cup overflows, the game is over.
Points0
Time0:00
Balance×1,0
Capacity100%

The load cup

Tap the blocks or drag them sideways. Press and hold amber blocks.

What flows into the cup?

Stress fills the cup. Cannot be blocked.
Everyday movement tap – dissolves stress.
Training hold, release in the green window. Grows the cup.
Nutrition four groups. Let them through; all four make a plate.
Ultra-processed tap – fend it off.
Recovery let it through – lowers the level.
Green band balance. Points are earned here.

The model behind it

The cup stands for the cumulative load acting on the body. Training volume, sleep, psychosocial strain, illness and nutrition all flow into the same vessel. That is why the same training session can be tolerated well in a calm week and be too much in a demanding one.

What decides is the dose. Load is neither poison nor cure – the same stimulus builds you up or overwhelms you depending on its amount. In sport, injury risk depends less on the absolute size of the load than on rapid spikes: those who build up gradually and recover well end up tolerating considerably more.

An almost empty cup is no goal either. Tissue, circulation and nervous system adapt to what is regularly asked of them – without stimuli, load tolerance falls. The aim is not an empty cup but a bigger one.

That is why the cup has no fixed size in the game either. It grows with well-dosed training, with recovery that is actually used and with a balanced plate – and it shrinks when the level stays high for a long time or when hardly any stimuli arrive. In real life, poor sleep, illness and high strain belong here just as much. This is exactly why “too much” is individual – and changes over time. How load is best measured is, incidentally, contested in sports science: widely used metrics such as the acute-to-chronic workload ratio are now regarded as methodologically questionable.

Two things in the game are deliberately pointed. The width of the cup stands for closeness to the load: movement, recovery and a training stimulus do most where the load actually is – which is why the blocks can be dragged sideways. And nutrition is built as variety: protein, carbohydrate, fat and fibre count together, not against each other. What is unfavourable is above all a high share of ultra-processed products.

Sources

The numbers in the game are chosen freely and serve illustration. The underlying relationships draw on:

  1. Soligard T, Schwellnus M, Alonso JM, et al. How much is too much? (Part 1) International Olympic Committee consensus statement on load in sport and risk of injury. Br J Sports Med. 2016;50(17):1030–1041. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2016-096581.
  2. Windt J, Gabbett TJ. How do training and competition workloads relate to injury? The workload–injury aetiology model. Br J Sports Med. 2017;51(5):428–435. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2016-096040.
  3. Gabbett TJ. The training–injury prevention paradox: should athletes be training smarter and harder? Br J Sports Med. 2016;50(5):273–280. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2015-095788.
  4. Impellizzeri FM, Woodcock S, Coutts AJ, Fanchini M, McCall A, Vigotsky AD. What role do chronic workloads play in the acute to chronic workload ratio? Time to dismiss ACWR and its underlying theory. Sports Med. 2020;50(12):2075–2081. doi:10.1007/s40279-020-01378-6.
  5. Ivarsson A, Johnson U, Andersen MB, Tranaeus U, Stenling A, Lindwall M. Psychosocial factors and sport injuries: meta-analyses for prediction and prevention. Sports Med. 2017;47(2):353–365. doi:10.1007/s40279-016-0578-x.
  6. Milewski MD, Skaggs DL, Bishop GA, et al. Chronic lack of sleep is associated with increased sports injuries in adolescent athletes. J Pediatr Orthop. 2014;34(2):129–133. doi:10.1097/BPO.0000000000000151.
  7. Khan KM, Scott A. Mechanotherapy: how physical therapists’ prescription of exercise promotes tissue repair. Br J Sports Med. 2009;43(4):247–252. doi:10.1136/bjsm.2008.054239.
  8. Booth FW, Roberts CK, Laye MJ. Lack of exercise is a major cause of chronic diseases. Compr Physiol. 2012;2(2):1143–1211. doi:10.1002/cphy.c110025.
  9. Lane MM, Gamage E, Du S, et al. Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses. BMJ. 2024;384:e077310. doi:10.1136/bmj-2023-077310.
  10. Morton RW, Murphy KT, McKellar SR, et al. A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of the effect of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains in muscle mass and strength in healthy adults. Br J Sports Med. 2018;52(6):376–384. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2017-097608.

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