Fatique and overtrainness

When homeostatic body balance is disrupted, organism tries to adjust to maintain balance. It is obligation that training regime enables adjustment stimulus to the athlete, by exchanging rest periods with work periods. After some training 12-24 hours is needed for complete organism regeneration. To recover from training that is inside the limits of an athlete adjustment, specific technique regenerations have to be done and good progression of loads on training has to be planned.

Avoid big load increases on training. Exposure of an athlete to the high amounts of body stress out of their abilities or non-proper rest will result by fall in new stress adjustment. If not adjusted or if exposed on too big demands, fatique will occur and recovery from training will not be possible. Follow athlete reactions on training, like shown in the table under.

	Low intensity stimulus	Optimal stimulus	Stimulus to max limits	Max stimulus or little over limits
Fatique rate	low	big	exhaustion	exhaustion
Sweating	weak till medium upper body part	hard sweating of upper body	hard sweating of lower body	some sweating
Technical moves quality	controlled movements	loss of precision, some technical mistakes	weak coordination, technic errors, insecurity	motoric inconsistency, strength missing, weak precision
Concentration	normal fast reactions to coach instructins, max attention	low ability for technical elements, weaken concentration length	weak concentration, strength missing, inconsistency	inattention, impossibility to correct moves, intellectual concentration off
Training and health status	performance of all assignments	muscle weakness, strength missing, decreased work capacity	muscle and joints pain, headache and gastric problems, weakness	sleeping problems, muscle pain, high cardio rate even after 24 hours
Training mood	Excellent	good will, but wish for longer recovery	complete rest needed, wish to stop training	abhorrence to training, negative view to everything in training

To understand overtrainness well, few terms has to be defined. Acute fatique with the results of too big muscle tension after single training. This type of fatique lasts very shortly, maybe one-two days or shorter, and usual symptoms are muscle pain, restless sleep and increased reaction on alergents.

Overtrainness with muscle tension is caused by hitting microcycle and it is similar to acute fatique. However, symptoms don’t last longer than two days. Symptoms include: resisting to work, disrupted sleep, lack of apettite, unreasonable use of energy and emotional disorders.

Overreaching(acute fatique) is caused by one or more intensive microcycles or by too short recovery period. That type of fatique usually lasts from few days to two weeks. With this condition muscle tension can and needn’t be connected. Symptoms are similar to overload. They are more serious cause they include increased heart volume in the stadium of inaction, increased heart rate and lactic acid concentration during submaximal work, too early fatique, increased thirst, especially during night and worser performance.

Overtrainness syndrome is the result of consecutive overexcessed microcycles with insufficient regeneration. That fatique is long term and it lasts from few days to few months. During this phase it comes to significant organic changes, mostly in the shape of distrophia. This condition can and needn’t be followed by muscular tension.

As symptoms numerously grow, seriousness and complexity of this symptoms is being increased. Symptoms that are related with stimulus will vary depending on intensity.

Basically, three types exist: neuro-muscular, metabolic and neuro-endocrine.

"Periodization, theory and methodology of training", Tudor Bompa