Perhaps the most common cause of overtraining I encounter as a coach is by athletes who attempt to break their personal bests by too much in one training segment. Skipping a step or trying to make the jump from a marathon to a to qualify for Boston in one fell swoop will often lead to overtraining. Jack Daniels has been a pioneer on appropriate training levels and progression thanks to his VDOT tables, which give runners the opportunity to measure their training and racing performance.
In my experience, I have found training at your current fitness level, indicated by your most recent personal best, to be the safest and most consistent way to improve and avoid overtraining. Another common cause of overtraining is not giving your body enough rest between training cycles. I work with many runners who want to jump from one training cycle to the next with little or no rest between. Many runners tend to finish a tough training segment where they pushed their bodies to new limits and raced well and immediately jump back into hard training toward the next goal.
In doing so, these runners never give their bodies a chance to fully recover and absorb all the training from the last segment. They carry that fatigue with them and drastically increase the chance of overtraining. To improve long-term, it is absolutely critically that you give your body a substantial rest period after long training segments and big races. I suggest one week off for a 5K training cycle, weeks off for a 10K or half marathon, and a full 2 weeks off after a marathon.
It might sound like you would be holding yourself back by being so cautious, but your long-term progression will actually benefit. Even elite athletes realize how important a break between training cycles is. Finally, performing too many speed workouts or VO2 max training sessions in one training cycle has been proven to increase the risk of overtraining symptoms. For example, NASM recommends adopting an integrated training program , which includes "all forms" of exercise balance, cardio, core, flexibility, plyometrics, resistance, and speed-agility-and-quickness training.
Together, integrated, systematic, and progressive approaches can help prevent injury and overtraining while maximizing results Sutton, Even though overtraining syndrome is a prevalent force in the fitness world, why has OTS sometimes been treated with the same skepticism as UFOs? However, it is now believed OTS results from an accumulation of factors, many outside of exercise sessions. For an athlete to achieve their exercise goals—whether they are related to appearance, health, strength, performance, or a combination of these—a stimulus or stressor has to be introduced to the body repeatedly over time.
This will result in specific adaptations that are related to that stressor. This response is known as general adaptation syndrome. Once the body can meet the new demands of that stressor, an additional or different stimulus will need to be applied for the athlete to make further progress.
NASM Certified Personal Trainer course provides essential foundational knowledge in this area, and the course is available to everyone, including fitness enthusiasts who are not pursuing a career in the industry. The general adaptation syndrome model includes three stages in which the body reacts to a stressor:. Thus, the ideal exercise approach involves progressive overload, in which the intensity or volume of exercise is increased gradually and systematically to avoid exhaustion and while achieving the desired adaptations.
Many fitness enthusiasts will exercise to excess now and then—for example, when engaging in a competitive event or returning to sport after an extended break. But when overzealous workouts lead to fatigue and a decrease in performance that lasts for a few weeks, it is referred to as overreaching. Nonfunctional overreaching happens when the body does not enjoy the rest and recovery necessary to repair and regenerate before the next workout.
Recovery from OTS can take months or even years. Sometimes, damage caused by OTS can be so severe that the athlete may not be able to return to that sport Cadegiani et al. Fortunately, by learning to identify overtraining symptoms early, athletes can stop their slide down this slippery slope rather than downplaying or pushing through them.
Brenner, J. Overuse injuries, overtraining, and burnout in child and adolescent athletes. Pediatrics, 6 , — Budgett, R. Redefining the overtraining syndrome as the unexplained underperformance syndrome. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 34, 67— Cadegiani, F. Cannon, J. Rhabdomyolysis: What every fitness pro needs to know. American Fitness Summer. Clark, M. Cleveland Clinic. Davis, H. Effect of sports massage on performance and recovery: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Grandou, C. Sports Medicine, 50, — Hospital for Special Surgery. Kendall-Reed, P. Overtraining syndrome— update. Kreher, J. Overtraining syndrome: A practical guide. Sports Health, 4 2 , — Lastella, M. Can sleep be used as an indicator of overreaching and overtraining in athletes? Frontiers in Physiology, 9, McComb, J. New York: Springer. Doi: Performance Assessments: Cardio, endurance, and strength.
Accessed December 2, How much sleep do we really need? Stryker, K. Why you might be overtraining and how to recover quickly. It is important to check in with routine blood work to ensure that your own blood levels are normal and that there is no other underlying cause for chronic fatigue.
Consult your doctor if you are concerned. Do you typically sleep like a rock but lately struggle to either fall or stay asleep? Sleep is another key indicator of under-recovering. Not only is it stressful to not sleep, but knowing that sleep is crucial for your body to recover makes this symptom even more stressful!
Chronic stress leads to increased hormone levels, especially cortisol, which can impact your sleeping patterns. Stress on a system example: effects of training on your body help to build the system back stronger by breaking it down, and then recovering from this stress.
The key: recovery. Not all stress was created equal though as many of us know. We have both physical training stress and more than likely, mental stress. Mental stress can include a plethora of life situations: family, job, friends, etc. Your body does not file training stress and mental stress into separate filing cabinets. Stress is stress.
This is important to remember as many times we like to think that during periods of heavy mental stress that adding heavy physical stress will help us out.
This is where the Psychobiological Model comes in. The overall idea is that endurance exercise is not limited by physiological barriers, but psychological barriers. Performing a workout while carrying a heavy load of excess mental fatigue reduces your performance.
If you have ever had trouble completing a workout as prescribed after a stressful day at work, but were properly fueled and off your feet, then you have experienced this phenomenon. There are two different types of stresses: eustress positive and destress negative. Your body responds positively and adapts to eustress. On the other hand, the body goes into protection mode when it encounters destress.
Your body has a limiting cap on just how much stress it can handle. Taking your daily stress levels into account is critical when evaluating your fatigue levels. Have you noticed that you are getting sick more often than usual? Or that your body is experiencing more frequent injury flare-ups? Illness and injury are two big flags when it comes to overtraining.
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