So it’s that time of year where the vast majority of sporting teams are on a break from their pre-season program, enjoying quality time with family and friends. I hope your festive season was a safe and enjoyable one!
I’m very fortunate in that I enjoy almost every sport available and always love talking shop when it comes to training theories and methods. But I’ve noticed something very alarming during this pre-season coming from two different camps in two different sports with two different genders.
Mammoth Overtraining
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| How big? Mammoth Big. |
The old adage that “more is better” runs rampant still in this day and age in some sporting circles.
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| Piledriver!!! |
I’ve said it in a previous blog, but I do truly dislike commenting on other coaches programs. When overtraining is as blatant as what I have witnessed in these two instances, It really grinds my gears.
Firstly what is overtraining??
“Training can be defined as a process of overload that is used to disturb homeostasis which results in acute fatigue leading to an improvement in performance” (p.243 Cardinale, 2011).
Basically that statement means training is where a stress is placed on a healthy body, it is allowed time to reover from that stress to an improved level and performance is ultimatley increased.
In a well structured training program the athlete will undergo a stress or stimulus leading to fatigue, they will then have a recovery period to which the body adapts to this stress above their original baseline called compensation then supercompensation and this is where the next training session would take place. Of course that example and the graph below depicting this represents the ideal world and cannot always be achieved when dealing with schedules, head coaches etc.
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| The basis of periodization. |
As you can see though, there is a major difference between that of the graph above and that of the one below depicting overtraining occurring through inadequate recovery and too intense training stress.
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| Overtraining occuring |
The issue of overtraining arises when the stress of training is excessive and compounded with life’s other stressors followed by insufficient rest and recovery leading to losses in performance and can affect one’s health adversely.
To improve performance in the athletic population over an extended period in which they are preparing for competition is both that of an art and a science. For the body to improve it must first undergo a stress from a stimulus to which with the proper recovery it will adapt to and compensate (super compensation) leading to an increase in the body’s ability to handle the previous stress.
Overtraining is when an athlete has insufficient rest and recovery from the stress of training, games and general life. Thus the increased stress of all these things compounds and reaches a point to which the body cannot continue to adapt to the stimulus in a positive manner and it begins to break down. Similar to if you drove you’re car flat chat on the limit for an extended amount of time, in the beginning you’re car could handle some serious punishment but after some time it needs to time to cool down, fresh oil, water and petrol to maintain its performance. The body is exactly the same, if an athlete is going to train at extreme stresses (as we are seeing with these training methods being employed by some sporting teams) then it is going to need ample recovery.
It should be noted that there is a concept called "Functional Overreaching" in which teams/players may increase a given workload for a short period when faced with either time off or an easy fixture. The training stress will be increased resulting in a short term performance decrement usually already allowed for by facing an easier opponent or by having a bye week and the resultant supercompensation puts the team/player at a better baseline than before without the overtrained state.
So what happens to the body when it reaches an overtrained state?
“The symptoms of overtraining include depressed mood, general apathy, decreased self-esteem, emotional instability, impaired performance, restlessness, irritability, disturbed sleep, weight loss, loss of appetite, increased resting heart rate, increased vulnerability to injuries, hormonal changes, and a lack of supercompensation.” (Kellman, 2010). An important clinical feature of overtraining is the increased susceptibility to infections aswell. An overtrained state may last weeks to months.
So what’s the issue?
Here’s the 411, Teams are slowing grinding their players into the ground for no reason, performing idiotic (I'm sorry but it's true) training sessions carrying logs up sand dunes, flipping tyres, running 10km’s in a single session when their sport never requires more than 7km of high intensity - intermittent running in a single game or conducting 90 minutes of high intensity conditioning sessions followed by 90 minutes of technical/tactical work when the gametime never exceeds 35 minutes for a single player.
It’s Ludacris.
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| Take that and wind it back, Luda! |
Too often I see (and personally have been one) player’s burn out by the first intra-club practice match in whichever sport it may be, suffering niggles before the regular season has even begun because they are in an overtrained state. Majority of players will undertake whatever is put in front of them by the coaching staff and will not question it. And that’s perfectly fine, that is a player doing whatever it takes to earn the respect of their coaches and teammates. That is where it is on the coaching staff and the conditioning staff to monitor the player and team to avoid overtraining and we will discuss how to do so in part 2.
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