Reading the Tea Leaves of a Sudden Drop in an Athlete’s Performance
Coaches and parents would be wise not to overlook an unexplained drop in an athlete’s performance. It’s easy to write this off as a one-time event or an anomaly. Instead of reading the proverbial tea leaves, instinctively parents and coaches want to trust the process and just stay the course.
THIS. IS. A. MISTAKE.
I always recommend that you should never trust the process if you can’t verify the process. Moreover, when it comes to a sudden drop in an athlete’s performance you must first verify that overtraining is not the culprit.
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 will be 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.
Finally, I recommend using this mid-season check-in to assess if an athlete is struggling due to a mental or physical performance problem.