Overtraining – An epidemic in Sri Lankan youth sports
View(s):
Overkill is the norm in most youth sports in Sri Lanka. Young players as well as amateur players are pushed hard to improve their game with six to seven days of weekly training schedules with little or no time for recovery between sessions. Many young athletes train anything between 20 to 30 hours during the training week. With this training mindset short term results are sometimes achieved at the expense of long term sustainable results. Player burnout, players dropping out from their sport and injuries are some of the many negative outcomes that result from overtraining.
Overtraining is worse than undertraining
Overtraining is one of the biggest factors that can contribute to a drastic drop in the performance of an athlete as well as increase his or her potential for injury. Training and playing tournaments while over training or carrying injuries will result in submaximal performances, loss of confidence and players ability to train hard. Remember, overtraining is worse than undertraining.
The only time overtraining works
The only time an athlete could get away with overtraining or actually improve sports performance by overtraining is through the use of performance enhancing drugs. Coaches and athletes that prescribe and consume performance enhancing drugs do so to train and recover beyond their actual physical capacity, without experiencing the side effects of overtraining. The dangers of taking performance enhancing drugs and the long term health issues that could arise are well known. Short term gain for long term pain should never be the answer for any athlete or sports team.
Stimulus vs Response
We need to think of training as a STIMULUS vs RESPONSE equation. Training (Stimulus) is where we train our sports brain for motor skill learning and bodies to get stronger, faster and fitter. The actual improvements of training are realised during the Recovery (Response) time in between training sessions and not when we are actually training. The amount of recovery time we give the body in between training sessions will dictate the success of the athletes’ skill and fitness programme. The positive response to training happens when we eat, rest and sleep not when we train.
More is not always better
When coaching non-professional athletes and young athletes in particular Sports coaches and fitness coaches need to ask themselves, “What’s the minimum amount of training we can do to get the training response we want? ”Eg – Can sports skill be improved with 6 hours of training a week instead of 10 hours a week? Can I make a player faster with a 15 minute speed and agility session instead of a 30 minutesession? Can I get a player stronger with a 30 minute strength session instead of a 60 minute session? Can stamina be improved by increasing the intensity of the sports skill session instead of dedicating separate sessions for running fitness?
These are important questions sports coaches and strength and conditioning coaches need to ask themselves when designing weekly and monthly training plans for youth and non professional athletes. Too much training and too little recovery will result in eventual player burn out, injuries and drop in performance. The smarter coaches plan recovery days first into the training week before slotting in training days for the week.
Work+Rest = Success
Training is one of the many stresses that teenage athletes and a non-professional athletes will have to go through when training for competition. Stress is the stimulus for all growth in life and sports. Optimal stress at training and life can bring out the best in a player. The issues arise when there is too much stress in a player’s life. A professional athlete will have much less stress outside of their sport compared to a non-professional athlete. Non professional and teenage athletes will have to face life stresses such as work, family, exams, studies etc. This would mean a young athlete or non-professional athletes would need to train less to get the positive response from training. Over training and too much life stress will eventually result in poor performance in their sport.
Bilal Yusuf is the founder of Athlete Unleashed, which is Sri Lanka’s first ever High Performance Center. He is a qualified and experienced Strength and Conditioning Coach having trained national level and grass root level athletes. Bilal is also a qualified rugby coach having coached at school and club level. Bilal can be contacted at athleteunleashed@gmail.com