Training Load: Over Load, Adaptation and Recovery (Introduction)

The sports training process involves activities and movements that lead to fatigue. Fatigue is the direct product of the load caused by physical activity or exercise, and — perhaps surprisingly — it is essential for improving a sportsperson's performance capacity: it is the stress that forces the body to adapt. Training load is therefore of central importance in sports training, and load, over-load and recovery are critical issues for everyone caring for athletes.

Why fatigue is necessary, not just a side effect

The body only improves when it is pushed beyond what it is already comfortable doing. A training stimulus disturbs the body's normal balance — this disturbance is what triggers the biological changes (stronger muscle fibres, a more efficient heart, better-coordinated nerve-to-muscle signalling) that make the next similar effort easier. If training never produced fatigue, it would never produce adaptation either; a session that leaves no trace of tiredness is usually a session too easy to improve the athlete.

This is the basis of the stimulus-fatigue-recovery-adaptation cycle that underlies this whole section: a load is applied, fatigue appears, the athlete recovers, and — if the recovery is complete and well-timed — performance capacity ends up slightly higher than before the load was applied. Repeating this cycle correctly, cycle after cycle, is what long-term improvement actually consists of.

Practical application …