CHRONIC INJURIES* – AVOIDING OVERTRAINING

Often chronic injuries result from overtraining and failing to give your body enough time to recover. Our minds have a natural tendency to think that more practice equals faster improvement, however this isn’t exactly true. You must train often to improve. However, beyond a certain threshold, you have diminishing returns and excess training can actually be harmful to your body. A better approach is to make your practices shorter but very focused and to ensure your body has sufficient time each week to rest (more on this later). It’s important to weigh the benefit of that extra bout or practice session against the risk of injury and the possibility of missing out on weeks or months of practice. At a certain point, it stops being worth it.

USA Fencing is blessed to have many talented coaches from all over the world, but this translates, unfortunately, into a wide range of opinions on the baseline number of hours for training each week.

The key thing is to listen to your own body. There are general guidelines as to what works for most people, but like in most things in life, everyone and every body is different. It can be difficult to recognize the fine line between properly challenging yourself and overtraining. The typical symptoms of overtraining, according to a paper published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, are

Extreme fatigue

Heavy muscles

Depression

Sleep disturbance (e.g. nightmares)

Appetite and weight loss

Loss of competitive drive

Loss of libido

Increased irritability and anxiety

Higher resting pulse

Excessive sweating

Recurrence of minor infections

Additionally, the bodies of many adolescent athletes are still developing and should not be put under the same strain as adult athletes. Another contributing factor to overtraining, which tends to affect younger athletes, is pressure from parents and/or coaches. An excerpt from a paper written by Joel Brenner, a pediatric specialist at Johns Hopkins, suggests some guidance for young athletes.

“The American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness recommends limiting 1 sporting activity to a maximum of 5 days per week with at least 1 day off from any organized physical activity. In addition, athletes should have at least 2 to 3 months off per year from their particular sport during which they can let injuries heal, refresh the mind, and work on strength, conditioning, and proprioception in hopes of reducing injury risk.”

I personally struggled a great deal with the issue of overtraining. As an adolescent athlete, my training schedule was not extensive. I trained with my first coach, Daniel Costin, for about two hours, typically four times per week. However, when I went to college at The Ohio State University, I entered into a very different training mentality. My practice schedule, in effect, doubled to two hours, twice a day, five times per week in addition to an aggressive schedule of NCAA, junior and senior competitions (domestic and international).

Looking back, I now understand how important it was for me to work full-time with Vladimir Nazlymov and how deeply I wanted to live up to his expectations and confidence in me. As a result, I didn’t always listen to my body and often found myself battling many of the symptoms mentioned above. I was an adult, and the fault was completely my own for pushing myself too hard and not acknowledging the little voice in my head that was telling me to slow down. If you ever feel this is an issue for you, the first step must always be to share your concern with your coach to see what can be done to limit excess training.

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