Understanding Overtraining and How to Identify It and Prevent It
Overtraining is a form of burnout that is generally temporary, and a result of perpetual fatigue. Many athletes overtrain their bodies without realizing it. However, when an athlete does overtrain, they will notice a significant drop in performance. Unfortunately, athletes (and often their parents and coaches) respond to this drop in performance with more training instead of rest. This then exacerbates the problem.
According to a recent study, overtraining leads to bad decision making and a reduction in mental capacity. This means that when an athlete overtrains, they are prone to strategic errors when competing.
Therefore, the two signs to look for when watching out for overtraining are:
- An unexplained drop in the athlete’s performance when training routines have not changed otherwise.
- A noticeable change in the athlete’s memory, decision making ability, motivation, self-control, or discipline.
The best thing to do once you suspect overtraining is to give the athlete a week or two of rest. Various studies show that athletes won’t lose conditioning, muscle memory, or strength after as much as two weeks of rest. In fact, these studies show that several days of rest after intense training will actually improve performance.
How to Prevent Overtraining
In you want to prevent overtraining, a good rule of thumb to use when attempting to peak for an important event is to start tapering training two weeks before the competition. Tapering is the process of reducing the load on an athlete’s mind and body little by little each day to the point of full recovery a day or two before an event. Coaches with experience preventing overtraining know exactly how to implement a tapering process for their sport.
Other than incorporating a tapering process in the training cycle, planned rest is by far the best way to prevent overtraining. On the one hand an athlete could just listen to their body and rest when their body tells them they have no other choice. But this approach is undisciplined. An athlete who takes random days off for rest will drive a coach nuts.
On the other hand, if the mindset is that rest is just as important as training, then rest becomes part of the process. Furthermore, the idea of training 7 days a week is eliminated. Rest days become not only part of the plan, but the critical path in the plan that allows a coach to plan backward from the date that tapering will start. When this approach is taken, there are few if any days of unplanned rest to derail training.