This document discusses strategies for recovering from overtraining in athletes. It recommends that overtrained athletes take a minimum 2-week rest break with no exercise. Following this, active rest including light aerobic exercise of 5-10 minutes daily gradually increasing over 6-12 weeks is suggested. Adequate nutrition, particularly high carbohydrate intake, relaxation techniques, and monitoring training load and recovery are also important to successfully recover and prevent recurring overtraining.

1. Overtraining and recovery

2. Learning objectives
• To understand the various recovery strategies
available for overtrained individuals and the
evidence behind the strategies. Will also be
taking a look at the importance of nutrition on
recovery and prevention.
• Look at ways athletes/players can self monitor
their training along with their coaches in an
attempt to improve recovery and training
balance.

3. Recovery Strategies
Once an athlete or player has been correctly
diagnosed as overtrained, the first priority as a
coach is to make them take a 2 week rest break.
They should not compete in any sports or exercise
during this 2 week period.
Following the 2 week break if there is no
improvement In symptoms or performance, more
long term recovery strategies need to be looked at
as followed.

4. Rest and sleep
One of the most obvious and efficient ways of aiding in
recovery is through passive rest and sleep.
Athletes are recommended of having at least one full day
of passive rest a week, studies have found that those who
don’t rest enough, especially during bouts of intensive
training are closely linked to becoming overtrained
(Bruin, Kuipers and A. Keizer, 1994).
A rest day will also allow the player/athlete to have a
“time out” period away from the sport and training, it
may encourage them to take up another hobby or
interest which will help reduce stress and mental issues.

5. Sleep is obviously very important to recovery so
make sure athletes/players are getting enough.
Once again this can be recorded as part of your
observations and also will help you identify any
changes in sleep pattern which may indicate an
overtrained state (TAYLOR, ROGERS and DRIVER,
1997).
(Meeusen et al., 2013)

6. Active rest
As you may well have experienced, athletes and
players are always reluctant to rest and
therefore telling an individual to take 2 weeks
complete rest may not sit well with them.
This is where the idea of active rest comes in, it
also believed active rest can actually help
improve recovery (Marion, 1995).

7. (Budgett, 1994) recommends an individual
exercises aerobically at a pulse rate of 120-140
beats per minute for five to ten minutes daily. And
slowly build this up over a 6-12 week period.
The time it takes for athlete to recover and improve
will be dependant on the person. But the main idea
is to build up slowly and therefore avoid the cycle of
returning to hard training to soon whilst still being
partly rested and therefore initiating an overtrained
state once again.

8. Athletes/players are encouraged to cross train as by
playing a new sport they will be less inclined to increase
volume to quickly like they would in their usual sport of
choice.
Need to positively encourage individuals and help them
build up volume slowly to around an hour a day. Once at
this level more intensive training can be used which will
be above the onset of blood lactate accumulation (Snyder
et al., 1993).
Short 10s or less sprints are allowed, as long as they are
followed with 5 minutes of rest and allow some forms of
hard training to take place during the active rest period.
(Budgett, 1994)

9. Relaxation and Emotional support
A few studies have shown that mental training
might help prevent and improve the effect of
OTS, due to its ability to increase recovery
capacity and stress tolerance (Veale, 1991).
The use of relaxation techniques such as
massages, saunas and flotation tanks are all
recommended as proactive recovery strategies,
and they have good results (Marion, 1995)

10. Regeneration techniques have also been used ,
these are very popular in Eastern European
countries. They involve the removal of all
nontraining stressors e.g. occupational, educational
and financial. Additionally the recovery techniques
already talked about are also incorporated into the
athletes routine with good success.
Best to sit down and talk to your athlete or player
and decide which option is best.
(Budgett, 1994)

11. Nutrition

12. Nutrition
OTS is brought on by high-intensity training with
limited recovery. It is believed that the fatigue and
underperformance associated with overtraining is
partly down to a decrease in glycogen levels.
Glycogen depletion results in higher circulating
levels of catecholamine's, cortisol and glucagon in
response to exercise while insulin levels are low.
(Budgett, 1994)

13. Repeated hard training and carbohydrate depletion are
directly linked to OTS, so it is tempting to think that
carbohydrate supplementation may help prevent the onset of
OTS (SNYDER, 1998).
A study to test this was conducted: A group of runners who
ran 16-21km on a daily basis for seven days and treated all
these runs as races found performance dropped greatly when
consuming 5.5g/kg bodyweight of carbohydrates per day.
They also began showing many of the symptoms associated
with overtraining, however when carb intake was increased to
8.5g/kg bodyweight, drop in performance was much smaller
and symptoms reduced considerably. (Achten, 2004)

14. Another study by (Halson, Lancaster, Achten, Gleeson, &
Jeukendrup, 2004) was conducted on trained cyclists.
They were instructed to perform 8 days of intense
exercise training (normal training volume doubled).
The training was performed twice with a 2 week break of
recovery between each. One time the athletes consumed
a low carb diet totalling 6.4g/kg bodyweight and the
second time a much higher carb intake diet of 9.4g/kg.
The intense training induced overreaching as expected
and this was seen by a decrease in performance (time to
fatigue ~74% of aerobic capacity)

15. However the decrease in performance was a lot
smaller following the high carb diet intake.
Suggesting a high carb intake may help reduce the
effects of overtraining and overreaching.
Recovery was also much improved when the high
carb diet was consumed, with performance still
below the baseline following the 2 week rest on the
low carb diet but increased performance was seen
in the high carb diet following 2 weeks rest.
Improved mood state was also witnessed In the
form of a POMS questionnaire following the high
carb diet.

16. Therefore you need to make sure athletes and
players are hitting their nutritional
requirements. Carb intake and total caloric
intake must be high enough to compensate for
heavy training periods to prevent an individual
from slipping into a negative energy balance and
thus increasing risk of overtraining.
Protein should also remain high as there has
been evidence to suggest that not enough
protein can also increase the risk of OTS
manifesting (Kingsbury, Kay and Hjelm, 1998).

17. Example diet

18. Monitoring training and adequate
recovery
Coaches like yourselves and your athlete/players
need to devise a way of monitoring training and
recovery to prevent OTS manifesting.
It must be something which is quick and can be
done daily and also any variables in the data should
be easily recognised.
By recording training and recovery , an individual is
able to better balance the two.

19. RPE Model
The RPE model or rate perceived exertion model is
one of the best in terms of recording how hard an
athlete feels they have worked during training.
Studies have shown that the RPE model is one of
the most accurate in accessing the intensity of an
exercise and also athletes were able to reproduce
similar results in time. This tells us that it is a
reliable and valid method of self monitoring and
therefore recommended to use (MORGAN, 1994), .

21. As you can see the model is very simple and
easy to use. The athlete just needs to give
themselves a rating on how they perceived the
workout.

22. The TQR Model
Please have a read through the TQR model handout.
The TQR model is important as it makes coaches and
athletes/players recognise the importance of recovery.
And by having to rate their recovery each day it makes
them more self aware of it and therefore recovery
improves.
The TQR ratings should be matched to RPE ratings, for
example a high RPE score indicated a hard training
session, therefore a high TQR score should be recorded to
show adequate recovery was provided.

23. Summary
Hopefully have an understand of the various
recovery methods available and how best to
implement each.
Should also understand the importance of nutrition
on recovery and how to monitor training and
recovery in a simple yet effective way.
Any questions please ask me or feel free to send
them in as a tweet #CFUUPS15