Overtraining

As training load increases there is an initial rapid improvement in fitness. Further increases produce diminishing returns until a optimum training is reached. Further training beyond this point produces less than optimal results until overtraining is reached when fitness is dramatically diminished.

Overtraining is a lack of recovery from training stress, often made worse by non-training stress such as poor sleep, work or emotional stress. All levels of runner can experience any of the types of overtraining, including Overtraining Syndrome. The goal of training is not to avoid fatigue, but to find the most training you can absorb and adapt to, rather than the most you can tolerate (see Training Readiness).

The overtraining continuum

The 2013 joint consensus statement of the European College of Sport Science and the American College of Sports Medicine (ECSS/ACSM) describes overreaching as an accumulation of training and/or non-training stress that causes a short-term drop in performance, and sets out a continuum:

• Functional overreaching: a drop in performance that recovers within days to a couple of weeks, followed by improvement. This is often the intended result of Overload training.
• Non-functional overreaching: a drop in performance lasting weeks to months, followed by full recovery.
• Overtraining Syndrome: a longer and more severe decline, usually with negative psychological changes, diagnosed only by excluding other causes. Recovery can take months and sometimes years. (Main article: Overtraining Syndrome.) There are various ways of categorizing Overtraining Syndrome Subtypes, including by the associated mental health impacts.

These categories can only be assigned afterwards, once you know how long recovery took.

Related problems

• Too Much Too Soon (TMTS) is different to Overtraining Syndrome, but it is related. Too Much Too Soon is where a new training stress is increased too quickly, combined with too little recovery causing injuries, but without the impaired performance, persistent fatigue, and mood changes of Overtraining Syndrome. (Main article: Too Much Too Soon.)
• Overuse is similar to TMTS, but is where a long term imbalance between training and recovery leads to injuries. Like TMTS, overuse does not have the mood changes that are indicative of Overtraining Syndrome. With Overuse passive recovery is often insufficient. (Main article: Overuse.)

How much training is optimal?

More training is not always better. In 33 trained male triathletes given three weeks of overload training, those who became functionally overreached gained less after the taper than those who were only acutely fatigued, and had more infections. The group that was only acutely fatigued had the best taper response. Equally, apparent "non-responders" to endurance training improved when their training dose was increased, so too little training is also a problem. Deliberately chasing overreaching appears unnecessary and may be counterproductive, although this rests largely on one well-controlled trial in men. See Optimal training versus avoiding overtraining for more detail.

Overtraining and Supercompensation

Exercise produces a temporary decrease in fitness, followed by a recovery and supercompensation.

With sufficient rest between workouts, fitness improves.

Without sufficient recovery time, the fatigue builds up until injury or overtraining syndrome occurs.

See also

• Overtraining Syndrome
• Recovering from Overtraining Syndrome
• Training Readiness
• Supercompensation