Sports Fitness Training

The phenomenon of overreaching and overtraining is not new to sport. Athletes involved in intense training often experience short-term and/or long-term decrements in performance. In fact, coaches and athletes often plan intensified periods of training in hopes that the training will promote greater training adaptations. Unfortunately, while some athletes respond well to the intensified training, others may become overreached and/or over­trained. According to Kreider, overreaching is an accumulation of training and/or nontraining stress resulting in a short-term decrement in performance capacity with or without related physiological and psychological signs and symptoms of overtraining in which restoration of performance capacity may take from several days to several weeks. More severely, overtraining is an accumulation of training and/or non training stress resulting in a long­term decrement in performance capacity with or without related physiological and psychological signs and symptoms of overtraining in which restoration of performance capacity may take several weeks or months.Although the specific etiology of overtraining is unclear, there are basically two types of overtraining described in the literature-sympathetic and parasympathetic . Sympathetic overtraining is typically associated with anaerobic strength-power training whereas parasympathetic overtraining is usually associated with endurance exercise training. In sympathetic-type over­training, performance is decreased and response to training stimulus is delayed. Athletes may also exhibit signs/ symptoms of increased irritability; disturbed patterns of sleep, weight loss, increased resting heart rate and blood pressure, and/or impaired recovery during training. In parasympathetic-type overtraining, performance capacity is decreased and response to training is also delayed with decreases in heart rate, blood pressure, and suppressed neuromuscular excitability. Other factors that can result in a decrease in performance are fatigue, depression, and altered endocrine function.

Although some overreached/overtrained athletes experience a decrease in performance without any signs/symptoms of overtraining, most will exhibit some of these overt signs. However, there does not appear to be any consistent pattern of symptoms of overtraining among athletes. Therefore, although some markers have been proposed, there are presently no valid markers of overreaching and overtraining other than reductions in exercise capacity.

Several factors have been suggested to increase the susceptibility of athletes to become overtrained. Care should be taken to plan training carefully so that the athletes are progressing properly from various training phases to avoid sudden increases in training volume and/or intensity. Care should also be taken to ensure that there is enough recovery time during training to optimize physiological adaptations. Additionally, one must consider that the athlete not only must endure the physical stress of training but that the psychological stress of competition, school, work, social environment, or personal life may add to the physical stress of training. 6 Coaches and trainers should be aware of these psychological stressors and alter training volume and intensity as necessary.

It is also clear that during periods of increased physical or psychological stress, athletes often do not eat enough calories to offset energy expenditure. The result is that the athlete maintains a negative energy status that may further compromise training adaptations. Consequently, coaches and trainers should ensure that the athlete is well-fed during periods of intensified training. Finally, it is recommended that coaches and athletes closely monitor signs and symptoms of overtraining during training. Research has indicated that some psychological signs (e.g., general fatigue, lethargy, disinterest in training, etc.) may often precede physiological symptoms of overreaching/ overtraining. Therefore, simply monitoring how athletes feel, how they perceive they are responding to training, and performance markers can serve as valuable feedback in understanding how athletes are tolerating training so that training volumelintensity can be altered accordingly.