something for those engaged in sports to chew on (including me)
Warning: Too much training can be bad
Overtraining can lead to fatigue, illness and poor performances
NEW YORK - TO UNDERSTAND the toll that overtraining can take on an athlete's life, consider the competitive arc of Whitney Myers, a fifth-year senior and a world-class swimmer at the University of Arizona. In 2006, she won the women's National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) title in the 200- and 400-yard individual medleys and then won gold in the 200-metre IM at the Pan Pacific Championships.
The accolades kept coming: Myers was named an all-American in several events and an NCAA Breakout Performer of the Year and swam for the United States national team.
But, barely a year later, the 23-year-old did badly at the 2007 long-course championships, making the final in only one event. For weeks before that, her performance in practices had been miserable - slow times, inert form.
'I remember standing behind the starting blocks at the pool and thinking, 'I don't want to be here',' she says. 'I felt terrible, mentally and physically.'
While trying to build on her breakthrough season, she had pushed too hard. She had overtrained. Though it seems innocuous, overtraining is not just a matter of having overdone things in a work-out or two.
It is, instead, a recognised illness (known formally as 'overtraining syndrome' by the growing cadre of doctors and researchers who study it). It is similar in many physiological and psychological respects to chronic fatigue syndrome and major depression, yet like neither.
Overtraining strikes indiscriminately, felling both endurance and strength athletes, particularly the most hardworking and tenacious.
By some estimates, up to 60 per cent of competitive athletes overtrain at some point.
A recent study of over 200 elite British athletes across a wide spectrum of sports found that more than 15 per cent met the criteria for being overtrained. More ordinary types can succumb, too. Says Ralph Reiff, a director of the StVincent Sports Performance Center in Indianapolis and a leading expert on the symptoms and treatment of overtraining:
'In my experience, a large percentage of the people who train for 10Ks, half-marathons and marathons are overtrained by the time they reach the starting line. Same with cyclists and cross-country skiers. A very high percentage get into a state of fatigue that they just cannot get out of.'
Until recently, overtraining was a medical enigma. Scientists and physicians had not understood much about the condition's underlying causes or why it would strike one athlete but not his training mate.
But, in the past year, new research has begun to explain why hard training sometimes ends in illness and how we may soon be able to predict when someone is on the verge of overdoing it.
The most frustrating thing about overtraining is that it is an outgrowth of optimum training.
'You can avoid overtraining by undertraining,' says Bob Larsen, the co-coach of Team Running USA, 'but then you don't win medals.'
Intense, prolonged training causes significant trauma to muscles. But trauma, in the right amount, is actually a good thing. Immediately after a hard work-out, there is a rise in blood levels of CPK, an enzyme released from damaged tissues.
The trauma also prompts the production of cytokines, which are inflammation-inducing proteins. Inflammation speeds blood flow to the sore muscles and aids in healing. In response to the inflamed muscles, the body releases cortisone, a stress-linked hormone that reduces swelling.
When the levels of these various substances are in balance, the inflammation and soreness in muscles will last a day or two, after which the muscles should not only have recovered but also be stronger than before. That is the theory behind 'overreaching', a training strategy followed by most competitive athletes today. It is often part of a long regimen that ends with tapering: doing only light work-outs in the days before a big event. If all has gone well, athletes will, at that point, be at their physiological peak. But all does not always go well.
'You expect a peak, but you get a slump,' Reiff says.
There is a wide range of symptoms often seen in overtrained athletes: mood changes, apathy, insomnia and fatigue (see below). There is, however, no mystery about how to treat overtraining. It is rest, rest and rest. Myers, who is studying to be a pharmacist, did just that late last summer. She rested. After weeks away, she returned to the water last fall and, in her most recent meets, has approached some of her previous best times. This summer, she hopes to swim well enough at the US Olympic trials to qualify for the Beijing Games in August.
NEW YORK TIMES
Signs of overtraining
- Fatigue that persists for more than 72 hours after a work-out, often accompanied by insomnia.
- Muscle pain and weaknesses that persist for more than three days.
- Irritability, anxiety, depression. Unsure if you're being extra moody? Ask your significant other.
- A rise in resting heart rate. Track yours by wearing a heart-rate monitor to bed.
- A dramatic drop-off in performance for no obvious reason.
- 'Heavy legs', or the feeling that your lower limbs, once springy and quick, have turned to stone.
- A loss of appetite, which exacerbates fatigue by sapping the body's fuel stores.
- Disruptions in the menstrual cycle.
- Cuts and bruises that heal slowly; overtraining might suppress your immune system.
- Falling levels of ferritin - a protein complex that stores iron - as revealed by blood work.
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