Even if you're working with a non -athlete, you
sit down and say, okay, you just want to train
for health and fitness, and you just bought a
three -month membership at my facility, and great,
well, let's see what we can do over three months.
Oh, by the way, halfway through, I'm going on
a family vacation for 10 days. Oh, okay, well,
I'm not going to tell the client that, well,
here's your workout, you better do it while you're
on vacation. It's like, no, well, there's a break.
I don't control that and we'll build that into
the program. Hi, Andy. It's my pleasure to have
you on Evidence Strong Show. If you could briefly
introduce yourself. Well, hello, Alex. My name
is Andy Fry. I'm coming to you from Lawrence,
Kansas, which is right in the middle of the USA.
And I am recently retired from the University
of Kansas, where I was a department chair and
then later director of the Jayhawk Athletic Performance
Lab and have over the years done a lot of work
in sports science and in the physiology, a lot
of it with resistance exercise. And today I believe
we're going to talk a little bit about one of
my favorite topics, which is overtraining. Excellent.
I feel very blessed to have you pulled you out
of retirement to teach us something. So, okay,
let's jump in. So we need to clarify some definitions
first. So what overtraining is and what is not?
I think overtraining is an overused word. And
I've come to that conclusion after spending the
best part of my research career trying to...
study it and understand it. A number of years
ago, The American College of Sports Medicine
and the European College of Sports Sciences got
together to form a position stand on the topic
because the terms come up repeatedly, overtraining,
overreaching. What are they? How do you avoid
it? How do you identify? And it's a very confusing
topic because there's a lot of things going on.
But in a nutshell, it boils down to you have
an increase in training volume and or training
intensity that leads. to a decrease in performance.
And some definitions actually say a stagnation
in performance, which is true. It could be that,
but that's hard to tell whether that's just normal
training or whether that's overtraining because
even on the best training programs, people stagnate
at places or they hit certain plateaus. And especially
when you get to the more highly trained individuals,
elite athletes, the gains are very small and
hard to get. And so plateaus happen all the time.
But perhaps the most important... characteristic
is there is an impairment in... performance.
And if that doesn't exist, then you're probably
talking about something else. How athlete burnout
would fit into that? You know, that's a great
question. If you went on to Google Scholar or
PubMed or Sport Discus and you typed in burnout,
you will get some overtraining references, but
you'll also get a lot of other stuff that comes
out of the psychology and mental skills and the
industrial world. Organizational psychology gets
into that a lot. So that's not an inappropriate...
term for what we're talking about, but it also,
that term also has a lot of different definitions.
So you kind of have to declare, operationally
define the context in which you're using it.
So if we're talking about sport or we're talking
about resistance exercise, okay, that narrows
it down quite a bit. So we have overtraining,
overreaching, and burnout. Let's say these three
now. If you, if I would force you to. Make some
kind of definition so these three become a different
thing. Would you be able to do it? I would say
no for burnout, but for overreaching and overtraining,
yes. And so... I'm going to back up just a little
bit because there is something called overtraining
and there is something called the overtraining
syndrome. And this is important to know the difference.
So perhaps a good way to look at it is to think
overtraining is the process. So if you were my
coach and you were giving me a very aggressive
training block, whether it's high volume, whether
it's high intensity, whether it's a combination
of both. And let's just say we're in the weight
room. So you know that you are giving me a very.
challenging block of training. And so that is...
Me going in, doing the sets, the reps, the loads,
whatever the rest interval is, whatever the training
frequency is, whether it's an exercise that has
what we like to call a high exercise intensity,
like a squat, a clean, or a leg press, versus
a low exercise intensity, like a wrist curl.
Okay, they both can be very difficult and challenging,
but the total how much it taxes your body is
quite different. And that is the process, me
going through that stimulus. And if it's overtraining,
then... When you're monitoring what I'm doing,
you're doing some periodic testing or maybe some
daily assessments or whatever, and you're seeing
my performance is actually regressing. I'm not
going in the right direction. And so there's
the end result being my decreased performance
and everything else that comes with it. That's
the syndrome. And that's where you end up. But
the actual process is the overtraining. And if
you're the strength coach or the coach of the
team or whatever, you have the ability to make
adjustments. Now, if it's done on purpose, and
that is often done by a lot of good coaches,
you have a year in a very higher volume, say,
adjustment. general preparation phase of your
training. You're trying to get a lot of training
volume in. You know that that's going to be stressful
and you don't schedule any competitions at the
end of that phase because... because of the accumulated
fatigue. That is often done, but if you're a
good coach, you know when to pull back on the
reins to decrease the training stress. That's
done all the time in sports, and that can be
done in the weight room as well. A lot of sports
will have a phase where they may have multiple
practices in a day, and they'll do that here
in the United States at the collegiate level
that's commonly done. For example, American football.
The athletes report towards the end of summer,
and they'll have one to two weeks. of two or
three practices a day. very taxing. It's very
fatiguing. And there is no game at the end of
that one or two weeks. There's a recovery phase.
And the coaches, a good coach knows they can
push them hard. And some of those later practices
may be extremely challenging and not high level
performance. But then you then introduce the
taper and let's back off because there are several
weeks before they go into their first competition.
And so that's what we would call overreaching.
So performance goes. down. But in a short period
of recovery, in days or a matter of days or a
week or two, you can come back and you get a
benefit. You supercompensate. So that goes to
some of the work of F .W. Dick. And I mean, that's
been out there for decades and decades. And it
looks somewhat like the general adaptation model
of cellulase, where there is a stress, an alarm
reaction, a response, and then there is a supercompensation
and adaptation. Now, that line. On paper, that
line looks real nice and neat. You come back
and, oh, look, I've made great progress. That
line may look a little different depending on
a number of factors, but the concept is still
there. The paradigm, meaning the model, in reality,
it doesn't always look the same, but you're following
the same pattern. You provide a stress to which
the individual can adapt and they can not only
recover, but they can actually adapt and gain
benefit from it. So that's an example of overreaching,
but there's two kinds of overreaching. There's
function. overreaching, which is what I just
described. So that serves a purpose. You're the
coach. You look at me and you say, okay, we got
a super compensation and now Andy's at a little
bit higher level. And all right, that's great.
And obviously with highly trained elite level
athletes, those bumps are going to be little.
And with people that are less trained, you'll
see greater, a greater impact. But there's the
other kind of overreaching is non -functional
overreaching. And that's where you've provided.
the stimulus, you've driven the individual down,
performance, they're in the alarm phase of the
general adaptation syndrome, and their ability
to recover is slow. And if they can make it back
to where they started, then, okay, I'm recovered
now. But you have to ask yourself, was there
a benefit to doing that? At least performance
-wise, I'm not seeing it. Now, are there some
other positive adaptations? Possibly. But if
I'm an athlete, I'm... got a season, I have a
competition schedule that really dictates when
I need to perform. And that would be, that's
a type of overtraining, but it's a lesser version.
It's called non -functional overreaching. I can
recover. I've kind of messed up my training maybe
for a few weeks, but I can come back within a
few weeks. If it's overtraining though, it's
long -term. It's months to longer. And if I'm
your athlete, Alex, and you have truly overtrained
me, first of all, I might be looking for a new
coach. But also, I'm probably going to have to
not worry about this athletic season because
it takes a long time to recover. And that gets
behind why I think it's an often overused word
because people, I'll ask my students in class,
how many of you have overtrained at any time?
And 80, 90 % of them will raise their hand. Oh,
yeah, yeah, yeah, I've done that. Well, they've
gone through stressful phases of training, but
is it the fully, the full -blown? overtraining
syndrome where performance is impaired and it
doesn't come back easily and it takes it takes
a while and that's not even talking about the
increased risk of injury which is hard to get
into because there's so many things that can
contribute to injury it makes sense that there
would be a higher risk of injury. But find me
the data that shows the injury rate after an
overreaching phase. It's hard to find. So you
have the full -blown overtraining. You have overreaching
that's functional and can be a good part of the
training. And you have non -functional, which
is sort of a waste of time. But if you're fully
overtrained, you've really messed up your training
program for quite a period of time. And if you're
an athlete training for a particular sport, that's
going to throw a monkey. wrench into your upcoming
competitions, if not your whole annual training
cycle. So let's bring it a little bit together.
So overtraining as a process is putting more
than the athlete can recover short term. Then
if it's on purpose, then it's overreaching. If
it worked, an athlete supercompensates and gets
better. That's functional overreaching. If they
barely recover, didn't improve, that's non -functional.
And then if this non -recovery persists and they
don't get, not only not get a super compensation,
they also do not recover to the baseline. They
basically stay run down and it goes for a certain
period of time. That's overtraining syndrome.
Yeah, that summarizes it pretty well. I also
want to point out that the National Strength
and Conditioning Association has their text that
kind of goes along with their certification,
the Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist.
And before too long, they're going to be coming
out with their fifth edition, and they've added
a chapter on this thing, overtraining, and how
it might apply to the strength and conditioning
professional. And in there, there's a diagram
that refers to... There's also some that's stressful
training. So just because a coach prescribes
stressful training session or a stressful phase,
that's not necessarily over. You may not have
a decrease in performance. You may be tired and
fatigued, but you're fine. And that happens all
the time with aggressive training and especially
in athletes that have a very specific focus.
I'm trying to perform the best I can in my sport,
reach my goal for this. this mesocycle or for
this quadrennium, you know, if I'm an Olympic
level athlete or whatever, I'm really reaching
for that. And so, yes, you're going to have stressful
training, but, and I will have times where I
would like to have functional overreaching, but
stressful training doesn't necessarily end up
with impaired performance. All the others do.
Sometimes you know it. I tell you a great example,
functional overreaching is done all the time
in the American collegiate system with swimming.
And so the collegiate swim season here in the
U .S. is sometime, you know, starts sometime
in the fall. And then you have the holiday break
with Christmas and New Year's. And then they
go into the spring. And so they got this break
kind of in the middle. Well, what do we do during
this holiday time? And a lot of them will go
off to a training camp. Now, mind you, it's about
a third of the way or a fourth or a third of
the way into their season. But they're going
to go do a training camp. And quite often they
do. insane volumes. They swim crazy distances.
And what I find fascinating is it's not unusual
that they'll schedule a meet right at the end
of that. And everybody knows that their times
will not be great, but they want to see, well,
where are we though? So. Not as fast as I need
to be where I'm going, but I'm really aiming
for out here, the big competitions at the end.
You know, that's a type of a sport like athletics
or track and field or, you know, swimming is
a good example. Any kind of sport that's an individual
sport, even though you're on a team or a relay,
you still swim individually. They can aim for
a contest at the end of their season. Whereas
if it's a team sport, I can't sacrifice too many
games along the way. have to have a good, good
record throughout the entire year. So that's
a great example of functional overreaching. And
the coaches know it's going to be ugly after
that training block. The athletes know it. And
they, in, you know, I used to have a roommate
who laughed about it. He says, oh yeah, it was
terrible times. But, but maybe they, you know,
they get to be able to gauge, okay, how stressful
was it? And that helps the coach moving forward.
So now they've got, they didn't do a special
test, but it really is that monitoring your athletes.
Let's do a. real competition. You've got real
opponents. It's not just a scrimmage in practice
or a time trial. And let's see where you are.
And then we can adjust your training if need
be from there on out. how hard it is to push
the athletes over the edge. How hard it is to
go from a non -functional overreaching to overtraining
syndrome. Years ago, I wish I could remember
who it was. I was at a conference, I think it
was in Europe, and one of the speakers on this
topic started out by saying, you can train as
long as you want, as hard as you want, as often
as you want. And then he paused and he said,
as long as you allow for recovery. And so that's
the other piece of the, you know, yes, you can
train hard, but that means, well, you have to
make sure you're recovered. If I don't have a
good measure of assessing, like the person at
my fitness center, you know, maybe not doing
the best training program, but I don't really
have something I can gauge them with. an athlete,
I should have something I can monitor it with,
whether it's a physical performance test, whether
it is a survey or questionnaire. How do you keep
them from going over? That's a challenging one
if you're on the edge. I do know many years ago,
I think I was in graduate school, American College
of Sports Medicine had a one -day workshop on
overtraining. So this would have been back, I
don't know, 1990 or something. And I'm sitting
there as a student like, oh yeah, this is awesome.
I'm going to take notes. I had my notepad out.
I'm going to get everything down. And on one
side of the stage were coaches that were national
level coaches and clearly had done something
right. to work their way up to working with the
level of athletes that they had. On the other
side were the sports scientists. And everybody,
they went down and everyone had their opening
statement. And every single sports scientist
said, yeah, overtraining is really, really hard.
It's bad. It's terrible. We got to do something
about it. We need to study it. Then they went
down to the coaches. And every single coach said,
yeah, we agree. Overtraining is bad. Now, we
haven't really had a problem with that on our
team. But and I'm sitting there listening to
every single coach say that. And I thought my
first thought was like, OK, these guys are pretty
arrogant. You know, I don't have that problem.
But then as the more I thought about it afterwards,
it's like, well, there's a reason that they're
coaching at that level and their full time job.
is to keep track of these athletes. And in some
cases they were large teams or large groups.
In some cases it was, you know, just small groups
or individuals, but that is their livelihood.
So everything revolves around. I got to do everything
I can to make sure this athlete is where they
are. And the researcher, and that's me, sits
in their university in their white lab coats
and comes up with all these theories and ideas.
And that's where I think if someone really wants
to work in this arena, they need to have worn
both hats. And if they haven't, they need to
be talking all the time to the people who are
doing the training. Well, the athlete too, but
especially the coaches. And if I'm... you know,
to find out, okay, what's going on in the real
world. And if someone has experience on both
sides of that equation, then good for them. But
yeah, it's hard because you got to push them
hard. You're also keeping track. Part of the
training program is the recovery. So you can
give me my sets and reps and my workout, and
you can give me the next six months worth, and
I'm going to be ready for whatever that competition
is. But in there too is, you know, okay, there's
going to be activities you prescribe to that
are for recovery. And that's part of the total
picture. And so, yeah, you can't run in high
gear all the time. I mean, those are good. That's
a simple question, but it's such a broad issue.
That's a really good one. So what I'm hearing
is overtraining syndrome is a bad thing and we
should avoid it. In reality, if the coaching
is done carefully and monitored, it may not be
such a big issue because the recovery response
of the athlete is taken into account when planning
the next stage of training or how much they should
recover and so on. Do you think we could move
into symptoms? So what the coaches should be
paying attention to in terms of walking this
line of pushing the performance? and making athletes
to adapt in an optimal way, but also not tipping
them over into overtraining syndrome? Well, yeah,
that's really a $64 ,000 question in that it's
how can I recognize it? You know, I mentioned
a couple of minutes ago, the coach paying attention
to their athletes and just observing it. And
that's pretty vague. It's not scientific, but
that is really the front line. Psychological
questions and questionnaires, and there are some
good... instruments out there that can be used.
Some of them are very long. Some of them have
been a lot shorter. And just you have to be careful
making up your own questionnaires because creating
a good questionnaire or survey instrument is
easier said than done. There's quite a skill
to it. But there are some validated tools available.
Would you have any examples on top of your head?
Yeah. One is, well, there are several. Even though
it was not designed for sport, there's an instrument
called the Profile of Mood State. And there was
a researcher who who's long retired now, but
Bill Morgan, who did a lot of work. Patrick O
'Connor followed up with some work with Profile
of Mood State, which is not for sport, it's just
in general, but they saw of the categories of
questions, they called it an iceberg profile
that showed the scoring, and then there was one
variable where if it was actually low, flipped,
sort of like an iceberg, you got a problem. Now,
there was a lot of research on it. One of the
challenges is it's not a short questionnaire.
There's the rescue. Michael Kellman out of Germany
has developed that and variations of it. We've
done a little bit with it, and there's different
lengths of one. So one of the challenges with
questionnaires is, can it be short enough that
you can administer? Can you ensure that your
athlete is going to be honest? Because they can
say, oh, yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine. And so how
you write your questionnaire, I don't know if
you've ever noticed, when you take an exam or
a survey, sometimes they'll ask you the same
question multiple times. It's worded differently.
And sometimes it's flipped. So I'm saying yes,
and then they reword it. And I say yes, and then
they reword it. Well, I need to say no or something.
And that's an internal check to make. sure that
people aren't just going, yes, yes, yes, yes,
yes. And so there's ways that a researcher can
establish that there's good internal validity
to these tests. And so they have to do research
to make sure that, one, it's repeatable. Two,
it's valid. It actually is sensitive to what
you're trying to measure. my fatigue state or
whatever. We had a very simple little 15 question
item that we just put on the back of their training
sheet for the day. And before they did it, they'd
sit down and consistently the questions dealing
with their ability to look forward to today's
workout. That was one that really stood out.
You know, do you feel recovered? Are you sore?
You know, those are physical traits, but you
know, my own perceptions of how I'm doing, but
then also, yeah, I'm ready to go. And sometimes
you know, everyone has workouts that they don't.
particularly want to do. I'm not looking forward,
but what's the pattern? And I may always score
it up here. You may always score it here. So
you have to see what's normal for that person.
So you can't just hand it out one day and because
it's like, oh, you've got no baseline. You know,
there's some other things that get a little fancier
in that. And yet this gets into the physiology,
what's going on in the body, which is what has
really triggered a lot of my interest. You know,
you see changes in cardiovascular activity, changes
in resting heart rates, changes in heart. rate
variability. You know, heart rate variability
has been used for decades in cardiology, you
know, from a medical standpoint. How well heart
rate variability data is collected is another
issue, because I know technologies out there
that let you collect it real quickly and put,
I'm not wearing it right now, I can wear one
of my smart watches. I can hit a button. There's
my heart rate variability while I'm sitting here
talking to you. Is that a valid way to do it?
Usually it's done when you're in a rested state.
There's different ways to analyze it. And so
that's helpful. Resting heart rate, you know,
distance runners use this a lot. By the time
you see your resting heart rate, when you're
beginning to move into overtraining or stressful
training, it goes down. And so for a distance
runner, that's tricky because as I become more
aerobically fit, my heart... resting heart rate
goes down. But these are already highly, highly
fit people. And yet they see a depression in
their resting heart rate. And that's related
to their parasympathetic nervous system. The
parasympathetic and sympathetic, the balance
between the two branches of the autonomic nervous
system, parasympathetic input predominates. And
so for a number of years, they've talked about
parasympathetic overtraining syndrome. Some critics
of that term I think I've gotten it twisted.
Just because your parasympathetic nervous system
is predominating doesn't mean that's what caused
overtraining. It's a result. It's part of the
syndrome. You've done the training that's created
that. And you see that mostly in distance runners
because they do these huge volumes of work. And
I don't care what you do in the weight room,
you can't do the same volume of work just because
it's at a much higher intensity in the weight
room. The other is sympathetic overtraining syndrome,
which had been hypothesized for a number of years,
but it wasn't seen until like the early 90s in
the weight room where you had your basal levels
of, in this case, circulating. epinephrine and
norepinephrine are elevated. And the theory,
the idea is, okay, you're trying to maintain
performance levels. So let's increase sympathetic
activity. Circulating epinephrine or adrenaline
is a potent stimulator of performance and part
of the fight or flight response. If I'm in an
emergency fight or flight, okay, I got to survive.
If I'm going in to do a training session, okay,
it's not life -threatening, but I'm challenging
myself. And so it's a kind of a different. version
of it. So I want an epinephrine response and
I will get one for sure. But this is kind of
like when it's out of whack and I'm becoming
fatigued and my body says, wait a minute, let's
pump out a little more at rest. And at some point
you get to where you can't get the same epinephrine
response because I'm... Some people like to use
the term adrenal exhaustion and it kind of, I
just don't have it in the tank. And so that's
where you as the coach, suppose you're putting
on a, you know, like a down in your country,
a gym aware is huge. I'm putting on some kind
of a velocity sensor, whether it's gym aware
or Tendo or lead form with their cameras or any
one of the IMUs you attach to a bar, but you'll
see, okay, velocities are just a little bit slower.
And we've seen that multiple times. But what's
interesting, you as the coach, you can visually
see it. And we've actually documented that where
we had people observing our subjects and they
said, I think there's a problem going on right
now. And sure enough, the velocities are off
just a little bit. And the average person wouldn't
see a single difference. But it's like, yeah,
not quite as zippy today when they should be.
And we look at the numbers and it's like, yeah.
Well, if my autonomic nervous system is... differently,
that affects everything. I mean, there's so much.
So whether it's a metabolic activity, energy
availability, whether it's contractility of the
muscle, there's relationships between sympathetic
or autonomic nervous system activity and the
endocrine system. So that's another thing people
say, well, you can measure certain hormones and,
you know, the classic is testosterone or cortisol
or the ratio between the two. But I can say this,
those hormones will change in response just to
stressful training. It may not be overtraining.
It's just, yeah, we've had a good, tough week
here and challenged it, and those hormones respond.
So they're more indicative of stressful training.
If you are overtrained, yeah, it's even, you
know, they are affected. But by the time they
go down, you've already kind of messed things
up. It's like, oh, so you really like to look
for something that is either a precursor or something
that's really sensitive so you can pick it up
right away, unless you are purposely pushing
someone into a functional overreaching state.
So you're balancing a lot of things. The nervous
system. The ability to recruit motor units, a
little bit of evidence, but not enough on what
goes on. But I'm thoroughly convinced something's
definitely going on because you're trying to
do whatever your sport is or you're trying to
lift in the weight room and it's not working
quite right. Well, clearly something's going
on with the neuromuscular system. And I'm not
even talking about injuries. Everyone likes to
say, oh, increased risk of injuries. That's a
hard one because you get, you know, the data
is not good for that. But on the other hand,
it makes sense that. yeah, you're fatigued. There
is data that shows being fatigued during a soccer
match or a football match. Yeah, more injuries
occur later in the second half and so forth.
So, I mean, there is some evidence, but as it
relates to overtraining, whenever we've studied
it and we've done it in the lab, we have to avoid
injuries because we do not want to do anything
to put the subjects at risk. And that's why we've
also avoided delayed onset muscle soreness as
a symptom. Because, I mean, that can contribute
to impaired performances. but that's not the
slow creep into overtraining. That's like, okay,
I did something way too much and something I'm
not accustomed to. And with high -level athletes,
can that occur? Sure. With beginners, yeah, all
the time. High -level athletes, it's a little
bit different because they're already highly
accustomed, highly trained. So what's the best
symptom? I don't know, but this gets me into
what I wanted you to ask is... something called
the allostatic load. So we're talking about what's
going on with the set. If we're in the weight
room, the sets and the reps and the frequency,
what exercises, et cetera. Okay. And the recovery
that you are or aren't prescribing for me, that's
a direct connection to overtraining. That is
the process. But there are a lot of other things
that people say, oh, this contributes to overtraining.
Say, for example, your diet. Okay, I can eat
a lousy diet. That's going to be problematic.
I may be fatigued and I'm not glycogen loading
or replenishing. I may be, so I'm not getting
enough carbs. Sleep. Yeah, I'm not getting adequate
sleep. That can be a problem. But none of that
is training. You know, that is part of all this
other stuff in your life that goes on. Relationships
with friends and family. Your job demands. I
had to work overtime two nights this week. Okay,
travel. time zones. Did I come down with an illness
or disease? Wow. I come in and I'm just really
dragging all this week. And then we find out,
yeah, I'm coming down with the flu. Oh, no wonder.
It wasn't the training. It was something else.
Or was it? Did the training make me more susceptible?
Because my immune system might be compromised
and there's evidence of that. So you have all
these other factors, which I'll call secondary
factors. Are they important? Yes. But just because
I don't have a good diet doesn't mean I'm overtrained.
And yet that can affect my performance. So it
can contribute to the overtraining syndrome,
but it works both ways. An overtraining syndrome
can contribute to all of those things. So maybe
I'm not eating well. Maybe I am coming down with
a bug because of the training. So did these factors
contribute to the overtraining syndrome or did
the overtraining syndrome contribute to these
factors? And that's a hard one to parse out.
And yet that's part of the bigger picture. One
thing you do have control over is the training
program. So if you know that you have an athlete
that does have a family, does have to supplement,
you know, maybe they're on the national team
and they don't have a full time. OK, I have to
work also or something. Or I'm a student here
in the U .S. I'm a collegiate athlete. I've got
to study and I've got, you know, 15 hours of
classes each week and everything. OK, then when
you design the training program, you have to
take that stuff into account. And so there's
some. things you can control, other things you
can't. There's a science to coaching, but there's
also an art to it that is dependent on the science.
And that's what makes it kind of exciting, both
as challenging for the athlete and challenging
for the coach or the trainer. With your practice,
coaching practice, for general population all
the way to elite, would you change your monitoring
strategies? Now, some of this is just my opinion,
but it's shaped by the data that I know of. If
I'm dealing with just the general population,
I'm thinking back to people that were my clients
at my facility, you're probably just going to
use something really simple. How are they feeling?
You could use questionnaires, but you don't have
to use written questionnaires. You can use, you
know, when you walk in the door, I say, Alex,
how are you doing today? You say, oh, tough day
at work, you know. Okay, I learned a huge piece
right there. We're going to go up over 90 % today.
We'll see. We might not. And, you know, you may
not have the resources. You may not have the
time with that kind of population. And it may
not be as critical. You know, you're not training
for sport. We'll just back off. We'll change.
That's okay. With highly trained people, a couple
things that really have stood out that are simple.
Whenever we have done sprinting tests, sprinting
velocity, speed, or the times, you know, we haven't
broken it down by gait analysis or acceleration
phases, just simple times for, you know, a 10
meter sprint to a 40 meter sprint, various distances.
Sprinting time goes south really quick. And it's
one of the first things that goes. And even when
you're not doing sprint training and it's not
soreness and it's not injury. but we're doing
other things. For example, in the weight room,
we know that, you know, we're tracking the diet,
we're tracking sleep, we're tracking psychological
and everything. And the decrease in sprint speed
is pretty amazing. And that's an area I'd like
to look at more because now you do have the technologies
to be able to look at step -by -step speed, not
just five meter intervals and stuff, but what's
going on. Every coach talks about first step
speed. Okay. But how do you measure it? And it's
not an easy test, but you can do it. So that's
one that I think is important. Power, measures
of power. So, you know, if you're into weightlifting
and, you know, I love that sport. Well, the only
slow thing in weightlifting is standing up after
you've cleaned it. Okay, I got to grind through
a front squat. But the clean is fast, the snatch
is fast, the jerk is fast. And so, but even if
you're measuring other things, like say squat
power, and it can be at modest weight, you know,
70 % or whatever, and it's not hard to track.
Power, there seems to be a sequence. Speed. is
affected first, like sprinting speed. Measures
of power are more sensitive. One of the least
sensitive is one rep max strength, which I find
interesting. Your body really preserves that,
but the ability to use it quickly, it's hard.
By the time your one RM decreases, you've really...
dug quite a hole for yourself. We've seen that
because we've taken subjects to where they've
lost up to 11 % on average of their one red max,
which, you know, if I was the coach, I should
be fired. And it wasn't due to injury or to delayed
onset muscle soreness. It was due to other things.
So that's interesting. Related to that, this
is an area that I think people like to do jump
testing. And now with Vauld and Hawkins and Pasco
and all these different companies, dual force
plates and we've, you know, we find that vertical
jump height is not as sensitive as some of the
other metrics. And I know a lot of people think,
okay, the counter movement part of a vertical
jump, maybe there's some metrics going on and
you can really dissect that force time curve.
Well, which ones exactly? And we're beginning
to look at different ways to analyze that. The
overtraining has happened and the athlete is
not recovering at all. What do we do? Well, you
know, training program has to be. modified. It's
likely that you'll see this at more at higher
levels. And I think maybe, I think it happens
more when people are self -training rather than,
you know, at higher levels, your coaching should
be at least good enough that they can realize
when, okay, we're a little beat up. And like
I say, it doesn't happen as often as people think.
But if it is truly overtraining and it's going
to take a long time to recover, you have to rule
out that there's not a medical condition that's
behind it. Because it's not uncommon that it's
like, okay, you've got an underlying condition
that that's why you weren't able to tolerate
it and other athletes were. So there's that issue.
There is issue of if it's that severe. You've
got to either stop your training or you have
to greatly bring it down, but you have to decrease
the amount of training. Some of that deals with,
well, how severe is it? Is it functional or is
it non -functional overreaching? Okay, you need
to back off the training and allow that person
to recover. You know, if you look at, for example,
banisters and others have done this, fitness
fatigue models, your fitness level, you can bring
it up to high. level and it will hang on for
a while. Your fatigue might also be very high.
And if you allow recovery, you can decrease the
fatigue. You may not be at your peak fitness
level, but you'll still be ahead of where you
were. And so being able to know, okay, how much
do we need to back them off? If it's the full
blown overtraining, some needs to stop because
your season is probably done. It's not going
to be, you know, it's probably going to be several
months. And there are examples of where even
a A year later, individuals have not returned
to where they were. So there's several classic
studies, I think, that Manfred Lehmann and his
research group, Jürgen Steinecker and his colleagues
in Germany, did a number of years ago. And they
looked at middle distance runners, and they had
a month of really aggressive training. And some
of them were still showing some of the signs
even a year later. That's not in the publication,
but in personal communications, they said that
was just tough. And it was a volume issue. It
was not intentional. It was just huge, huge distances
being run. And so they were able to look at something.
That's where they saw real strong evidence of
the parasympathetic overtraining syndrome. And
so, yeah. Their athletic season was, they were
done for that year. And they were not studying
the elite national team members, but they were
very highly, they were very high performers.
So they were not just your person who likes to
go out for a jog three, four, five times a week.
They were serious competing. And so you have
to back them off. And that's a killer because
the athlete does not want to do that, but you
have to do that. Lesser versions, you have to
back off somehow or change the form of training.
And that's where athletic trainers or physios
that deal with athletes, that's a challenge for
them because, hey, you need to rest that injury.
Well, I don't know, maybe I'll sneak a workout
in. Well, now you're interfering with the recovery.
And so that is one for sure thing. Now, you also
have to look at all the, if you're looking at
the allostatic load, everything else contributing.
Okay, what's going on with the diet? What's going
on with sleep? What's going on with work? What's
going on with, are you healthy? You don't have
an illness or a sickness or a disease or anything.
Is it an injury? Okay, that's something different.
That injury has to recover. So you have to take
care of that stuff too. But the training is.
something that strength conditioning code can
control and you have to hopefully enforce it.
But the good news is you should be able to pick
up on it before it gets to that severe, severe
level. And so what you see in the research studies,
like the stuff that we've done in our lab, and
we have several models of training that we do
in the lab where we're trying to push people
into a state of overreaching or overtraining.
And we've had some examples where It's taken
like several months before people are back to
where they want to just pick up their normal
training. That is not a good training program.
So we actually have had reviewers on the papers
say, well, this is not a very good training program.
And it's like, yeah. Exactly. This is very aggressive.
And in one example, we have people lifting very,
very heavy. The volume is not very high, but
it is high for that load. And so we had people
lifting at maximum loads repeatedly every day
and so forth, but they never did more than 10
successful repetitions a day. 10 reps, what's
that? One. Yeah, exactly. It depends. If I'm
lifting at 60 % loads, that's nothing. If I'm
lifting at 100%, yeah, you can't. You can't maintain
that. And so, yeah, it's a bad program. So, you
know, hopefully people don't do those kind of
programs, but some people do. And you can get
away with it for a little block, but you can't
do it continuously. Well, I think the tricky
part is you don't know until you actually run.
You don't know the barrier of the athlete. until
you check it. We try not to check it. We try
to crawl as close as possible, but not tip them
over. But every update is different. The situation
they are in at the training block now is different
than it was two years ago. So that's the artsy
part, I guess, of coaching. Yeah, you know, you're
exactly right. And so, yeah, so knowing the training
history. Knowing the injury history, knowing
the training history, knowing the competition
schedule, just knowing all the pieces, that's
part of it. Sort of related to that, it's been
a number of years ago, there's a gentleman, a
researcher who's now at Texas A &M University
here in the United States, Dr. Brian Mann. And
a number of years ago, he was at... a university
right next to our state, University of Missouri.
And they looked at injury rates on the athletes
in their athletic department and when it was
in the academic year or because you have like.
15 or 16 week long semester, and then there's
a holiday break, and then after the New Year's,
another semester like that. But there would be
the middle of semester is a time where mid -semester
exams often are. So there's a week where, okay,
and then at the end you had a week of final exams,
and then they saw that same thing. in the next
semester, the rate of injuries on the athletes
went up just a little bit during those times.
And it wasn't like astronomical numbers, but
it was statistically significant. It's like,
well, what's the difference? And this was across
a lot of different sports, some in season, some
not in season. But, well, you've got this stress.
You know, the assumption is, I got it. papers
to write. I got classes, exams to study for.
I don't know how I'm doing. Just all of that.
And even if you're a very good student, it's
still a stress. Well, stress is the smallest
issue, I guess, because athletes in general are
pretty resilient to stress. They have to perform
with the audience and so on. But when you're
running or even on time, like having exams scheduled
every second day or every day, you have to sacrifice
something, be it cooking or sleeping. or doing
recovery practices you would normally do here
and there, or even getting rested, you know,
just relaxing. That has to go because there's
not enough time to fit all the preparation you
need for the exams, annual, sport, and so on.
So that's what you say. Exactly. So that's part
of the allostatic load. The exam schedule does
not cause overtraining. Does it contribute to
the total stress load? Yes. Did the tough training
make it, you know, which came first, the chicken
or the egg? But it's part of the bigger picture.
As the coach or the trainer, you can't change.
That's not under your control, but you can account
for it in the training. And it's like, that's
fine. And you build that in. Just like even if
you were working with a non -athlete. You sit
down and say, okay, you just want to train for
health and fitness. And you just bought a three
-month membership at my facility. And great,
well, let's see what we can do over three months.
Oh, by the way, halfway through, I'm going on
a family vacation for 10 days. Oh, okay. Well,
I'm not going to tell the client that, well,
here's your workout. You better do it while you're
on vacation. It's like, no, well, there's a break.
I don't control that. And we'll build that into
the program. So is it, you know, for that person.
Not a problem. For an athlete, though, there
are some things you don't control and you have
to work around it. Competition schedule, travel
schedule. For a student athlete, there's study
schedule and class schedule. For someone else,
it's work schedule, whatever. What do you call
it? Commute? Maybe I live 45 minutes away from
the training center. Okay, well, that's an hour
and a half a day that I just got to get there
and get home. Or, you know, yeah, there's so
many factors. But, you know, it's all part of
the equation. is if you think hard enough and
broad enough and then close enough about overtraining,
it's not a problem because you are monitoring
and you're ready for it and you know your athletes
and so on. And now what would be your take -home
message from the topic? So what you really want
coaches and athletes to pull out on this conversation?
I think the definition is defined by the ACSM
and the European College of Sports Science. Does
that happen? Yes. Not as often as you think with
high level athletes, because you've got a system
around you that is helping you avoid that. Now,
I don't want anyone to say, oh, it really doesn't
occur that much. It does occur, but it is something
that can be. with proper monitoring and paying
attention to your athletes, you should be able
to pick up on it before it gets too far. So maybe
I messed up a week or two of training. Maybe
one of our games we were flat for, but we can
adjust. We can adjust for that. And keeping track
both on a personal level with your athletes,
as well as having some kind of a monitoring system
in place. There is currently not a single measure
that is like, yeah, this is a sign we got a problem
coming, other than performance. And if I'm in
a sport where it's a stopwatch or a tape measure
or how many kilos I've lifted, okay, you know,
changes in performance are... Pretty easy to
measure. If I'm in a team sport, it's harder
because, you know, I can kind of hide among the
other 10 players that are out on the pitch or
whatever the sport is. But that is one thing
for sure, seeing how performance is. And just
because someone has performed poorly doesn't
mean it's overtraining. Maybe who you played.
You know, okay, we played the top team in our
league and we're not so good. And all right,
yeah, that's going to be a tough game for everyone.
So you have to, you know, you have to put it.
in that context, but you should be able to pick
up on it. And if you can find some measures that
you can monitor athletes, some of them may be
on a daily basis, some may be just weekly, some
may be just periodically. You know, there's some
assessments you do at the beginning of the season
and the end of the season. That's not really
athlete monitoring that's done for other purposes,
but something that doesn't interfere and you
can establish a baseline pattern that corresponds
with the training stress or the competition stress,
you may find. that there are some variables that
are sensitive and you find are useful. And then
putting it together, being able to turn that
information around quickly so that if adjustment
needs to be made, it needs to be made now. You
know, and that's the problem with data coming
out of the lab that we tried hard to turn data
around as fast as we could if it was coming from
one of our teams or some organization we're working
with because they need that data now. They don't
need it in 10 months when it comes out. in publication.
And some data lends itself to that and some doesn't.
Awesome. So I have two questions I usually finish
with. The first one is, what is your favorite
exercise? Well, I have two parts to that answer.
When I used to, back in another day, I used to
compete in powerlifting. I competed a lot in
weightlifting. I did bodybuilding. My main sport
other than those was wrestling. But in powerlifting,
my best lift and one I enjoyed training the most
was squats. But in weightlifting, I love doing
the snatch and that was so fun. And I can't say
I was particularly good at it, but it was, it
was just so satisfying when that bar just popped
in place and you're just right in balance and
you just stood up with it. It's like, that seems
so easy. How come I can't do another two and
a half kilos? And so I really enjoyed that. And
that was a lift that I think. at least for me,
was sensitive to my training fatigue because
in my training log, I would be tracking my volume
load. For me, I knew that a certain volume, I
could only be above a certain threshold of volume
load so many training sessions in a row before
I had to, you know, so I knew to build in my
back off sessions because I get greedy. Be going
good, be going good. Let's keep it going. Ooh,
I shouldn't have. And I would really notice it
on the snatch and on. Those days, I could go
over and squat heavy. I could go over and grind
out the heavy load. But that explosiveness, well,
that's the power. So was I over -trained? Yeah,
but no, it wasn't over -training. I had just
lost that little edge. Not overreach, but it
was not good training. So there's a difference
between a poor training program and over -training.
You know, you may not be making progress because
that's just a bad program. Or you didn't time
your peak or your taper correctly. That's different
from overtraining. Now my favorite lift is because
I'll qualify this. I have two metal hips and
I will be getting someday a metal knee. And so
that changes things a little bit. So deadlifts.
I find I enjoy that because you can use a load.
It's so, I hate using the word functional because
anything you do in the weight room should be
functional. It serves a function. But it's so
basic to activities of daily living, bending
over, picking something up, moving things. And
so doing deadlifts and sometimes partial range
of motion because of limited mobility. But I
do enjoy that. And so I've got a few of my favorite
deadlift workouts that if I miss a training session.
it's probably not those training sessions. And
so we have a nice little setup here where I am.
So our new consulting business is operating out
of my home, but we've got a nice little training
center here in a conference room. And so we can
do that here. So what is your favorite lift?
Ooh, Jerk. I think I struggle the most with Jerk
at the moment, but this is my favorite. Yeah,
very cool. All right. And the last question is
where people can find you online? So you can
find me on, I am on LinkedIn, Andrew Fry. Also
our business, which you can get to our business
website, it's called Fry Sports Performance,
LLC, Limited Liability Corporation. And so my
wife and I, we have a website. You can get to
it through LinkedIn or you can... just go to.
Fry Sports Performance. That's F -R -Y. And we
have a website and kind of shows, you know, the
kind of stuff we do and some of the places we're
working with and what we do. And so we do collaborations
with researchers and writing projects. We do
curriculum evaluations. And my wife does mental
skills consulting because that's her area. Do
some expert witness testimony, do program evaluations
for, you know, training programs, that kind of
thing. And what I like about it is I'm continuing
the most fun stuff that I've done my whole career.
So it's like writing and analyzing data and connecting
with coaches and sport organizations. And yeah,
so that's how they can reach me. And my email,
anyone can reach out. It's acfry142 at gmail
.com. acfry142 at gmail .com. Thank you so much,
Andy. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much. Take
care.