Biological responses to overload training in endurance sports

Abstract

Five subjects undertook 10 days of twice daily interval training sessions on a treadmill followed by 5 days of active recovery. On days 1, 6, 11, and 16 the subjects were required to undertake a test of submaximal and maximal work capacity on a treadmill combined with a performance test consisting of a run to exhaustion with the treadmill set at 18 km · h⁻¹ and 1% gradient. Also on these days a pre-exercise blood sample was collected and analysed for a range of haematological, biochemical and immunological parameters. The subjects experienced a significant fall in performance on day 11 which had returned to pretraining levels on day 16. Serum ferritin concentrations were depressed significantly from pretraining concentrations at the conclusion of the recovery period while the expression of lymphocyte activation antigens (CD25⁺ and HLA-DR⁺) was increased both after the training phase and the recovery phase. The number of CD56⁺ cells in the peripheral circulation was depressed at the conclusion of the recovery period. Several parameters previously reported to change in association with overload training failing to reflect the decrease in performance experienced by subjects in this study, suggesting that overtraining may best be diagnosed through a multifactorial approach to the recognition of symptoms. The most important factor to consider may be a decrease in the level of performance following a regeneration period. The magnitude of this decreased performance necessary for the diagnosis of overtraining and the nature of an “appropriate” regeneration period are, however, difficult to define and may vary depending upon the training background of the subjects and the nature of the preceding training. It may or may not be associated with biochemical, haematological, physiological and immunological indicators. Individual cases may present a different range of symptoms and diagnosis of overtraining should not be excluded based on the failure of blood parameters to demonstrate variation. However, blood parameters may be useful to identify possible aetiology in each separate case report of overtraining. An outstanding factor to emerge from this study was the difficulty associated with an objective diagnosis of overtraining and this is a possible reason why there have been new accounts of overtraining research in the literature.