Faculty of Health Sciences
School of Medicine
Division of Sports Medicine
Overtraining Syndrome
Overtraining Syndrome (OTS) is a well-known and feared subject among athletes of all levels. The problem has been known for 70 years. It is marked by decreased performance, often accompanied with one or more other physiological and/or psychological symptoms. These may well include chronic increased fatigue, disturbed mood states, increased susceptibility to infections, sleep pattern disturbances, persistant muscle soreness, and changes in resting heart rate. The associated symptoms can be severe and recovery may take weeks, months or even longer. In such cases, athletes have been unable to continue their sporting career. Although overtraining has been associated with approximately 10-20% of elite athletes competing in endurance sports, understanding of the syndrome is very limited. There are no exact diagnostic criteria and many aspects concerning overtraining are uncertain. Plaguing questions are: what happens to athletes when they begin to overtrain; how does the pathologic condition of the whole body progress; is it possible to formulate uniform criteria for the early recognition of impending overtraining? Presently there are several hypotheses which attempt to explain various aspects of OTS, but all of them fail to give an encompassing view on the problem. Most published results are based on relative small numbers of study participants, diminishing the power of the statistics obtained. In some of these studies, OTS was induced over a relative short and intense exercising period, thereby failing to distinguish between overreaching and over training. The focus of this project is to facilitate a holistical multidisciplinary approach between cardiologists, exercise physiologists, biokinetici, psychologists as well as sports physicians to evaluate the many different and interrelated aspects of OTS in a relative large group of participating athletes, whom already present cited OTS symptoms
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