In Part 1 of this series, I gave a detailed definition of overtraining which I’ve reproduced below.
Overtraining occurs when there is a long-term imbalance between the training load and recovery processes that, for a given athlete, leads to a decrement in performance that takes more than 2-3 weeks to return to normal.
Having talked about the time frame issue along with the “for a given athlete bit” I want to look in detail at the issue of “decrement in performance”.
What Defines Overtraining?
Scientists have spent decades looking for biological markers of overtraining. I’ll talk about some of them in a later part of the series but, ultimately, most of them aren’t relevant or practical to measure for athletes. So you’ll see discussion of the glutamine to glutamate ratio in the blood or the testosterone/cortisol ratio. With changes being indicative that they might be occurring.
And neither of them (and many others) being at all useful in the real world for the majority of athletes. … Keep Reading