Are You At Risk Of Over-Training?

In the last post we discussed intra-session recovery and the reasons for paying close attention to this detail. During that post I mentioned a concept known as 'over-training' which may or may not be a familiar term. I wanted to take a brief moment to explain over-training, how we might know that we're over-trained, populations at risk for it, and how we can avoid it.
In essence, over-training is the result of the summation of over-reaching efforts over time without adequate recovery periods. Over-reaching is of course necessary (overload principle) to induce training adaptations, but when applied too frequently, or at an intensity that exceeds the body's ability to reach homeostasis, or both, we can reach an over-trained state. There are several proposed mechanisms for why this occurs, including muscular micro-traumas, elvated stress hormone levels (cortisone), calorie (energy) deficiencies, negative nitrogen balance, excessive neural strain, and others.

The symptoms of over-training are numerous, non-concurant, and perhaps some may not occur at all. For most athletes, understanding over-training can be difficult, since the symptoms seem to be standard effects of over-reaching. However it is important to note that these symtoms are persistant and more severe than typical training effects. It can often take an athlete experiencing these symptoms to truely understand how debilitating over-training can be (as was in my case) although this is something we should try to avoid.

Symptoms to watch for include muslce soreness, general fatigue, decreased training capacity, elevated resting heart rate, decreased heart rate variability, increased perpensity for injuries and illness, decreased immune responses, emotional imbalances, depression, irritability, inability to concentrate, sudden and seemingly irreversible weight loss, amennohrea or dismenorhea, disrupted sleep, and many others. If you're experiencing any of these symptoms, there is a chance you are over-trained.

Typically, athletes who engage in significant training protocols will be most at risk for over-training, especially if their periodization models do not allow for adequate recovery time. However, it may be more accurate to say that any indivudal who engages in training protocols that are relatively volminous are at the greatest risk. This can include any period in the training cycle for an individual, since the athletic capacity or fatigue resistance of an athlete can vary significantly through mesocycles.

As previously mentioned, it can be difficult to understand what being over-trained feels like unless you have experienced it. It is tempting then to suggest that every athlete should experience over-training syndrome at least once so they understand the debilitating effects and can therefore work more intelligently to avoid it in the future. However, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend that any person should be irresponsible in their training and partake in a schedule that will lead to the damaging effects that over-training brings forth.

To avoid over-training then, I believe I will almost always advocate a conservative approach to loading an athlete. This may result in a slower rate of improvement, but this just means that as professionals, we should be planning on a longer timeline to peak an athlete. With this conservative approach, we are in essence weighing the pros and cons of over-loading and over-training and proclaiming that we would rather improve an athlete at a slower rate and avoid the debilitating effects of over-training, rather than gamble with an athlete's health by fast-tracking them to a higher level of fitness.

As always, please share and repost this with anyone and everyone!

Learn everything you can, train hard, repeat.

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