The NY Times features an article today by Gina Kolata When Training Backfires: Hard Work That’s Too Hard.
The article describes a 15-year old runner who trains hard for a long period than experiences long term fatigue and degeneration of performance.
She attributes this, with some minor caveats, to over-training. Maybe. Maybe not. Kolata provides no analysis of obvious variables that could also have affected the young athlete's (or ANY athlete's) condition:
- No discussion of hormonal changes in a 15 year old? When my stepson hit 15 he wanted to sleep 13 or 14 hours a day. Then he grew almost 4 inches in one summer. His body's resources obviously turned to growth. Can a 15 year old expect to continue to make performance gains during such a period?
- No discussion of diet or nutrition. What did the kid eat? Did he change what he ate before his performance declined. What about food or seasonal allergies?
- No discussion of hydration.
- No discussion of the kind of training regimen the runner followed or even his training goals. This last point seem most important. One can easily mistake ill considered training for over-training, especially when doing long single modality low-intensity training rather than short, varied, high-intensity training.
To her credit Kolata cites sources who see over-training as over-diagnosed.
Alpha^2
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