It is summer. You wake up full of energy and pride, and all
sorts of ideas begin to race into your head: “I wish him all the best. I hope
he brings his A-game today.” You start saying your prayers, begin to wonder if
you should call or not, start scanning through social media for posts and
information, and then head up to the stadium, and it is a completely different
feeling. The atmosphere is chilling. Everything seems, feels, and sounds
different: it is your son’s first Tennis Grand Slam.
اضافة اعلان
Big sports events are what many parents dream of seeing
their children participate in. But for that dream to come true, there must be
quality training provided for years. And so, as parents, you begin working with
your child, giving them academy training, private training, abroad camps,
intensive training, and anything that can bring that dream closer.
But can we train too much?
Tudor O. Bompa and G. Gregory
Haff, two leading professors in sports science, define overtraining as a
long-term decrement in performance capacity resulting from an accumulation of
training and non-training stressors.
These stressors are physical and psychological. This means
training “too much” can have a huge detrimental impact on one’s physical and
psychological abilities. Overtraining can cause negative physical outcomes such
as injuries, but it can also cause harmful psychological effects such as
burnout.
According to the
Children’s Hospital of Chicago,
overtraining syndrome, or burnout, is when an athlete experiences fatigue and
declining performance in their sport despite continuing or increasing training.
Multiple risk factors can lead to burnout, especially in
young athletes. Specializing in one sport from an early age, sudden and large
increase in training, and pressure from parents or coaches are just a few
factors.
In young athletes, signs and symptoms of burnout can be
highly variable and can include chronic muscle and joint pain, weight loss and
loss of appetite, decreased sports performance, fatigue, frequent illness,
decreased school performance, personality or mood changes, sleep disturbances,
and increased anger or irritability.
Burnout can be described by
Naomi Osaka’s words after a
painful third-round loss when she was the defending US Open women’s singles
champion in September 2021: “When I win, I don’t feel happy. I feel more like a
relief, and then when I lose, I feel very sad, and I don’t think that’s
normal.”
Similarly, on July 28, 2021, in Tokyo, gymnast Simone Biles
withdrew from the individual all-around competition at the Olympics, a day
after she shocked the world by pulling out of the team event and later said:
“It’s been really stressful this
Olympic games ... it’s been a long week, a
long Olympic process, a long year. I think we’re a little too stressed out — we
should be out here having fun and that’s just not the case.”
In their book “Periodization,” Bompa and Haff explain the
term “overreaching” as a short-term decrement in performance capacity that
occurs as a result of an accumulation of fatigue resulting from training and
non-training stressors. Overreaching usually occurs without the physiological
and psychological signs and symptoms of overtraining.
The thin line between overtraining and overreaching can only
be monitored and applied by professional sports scientists and coaches.
Nonetheless, parents and coaches need to control their pressure on athletes.
Seeing positive feedback and enjoyment is what fuels our
fire as coaches and parents to push our young athletes even more. Sometimes,
this becomes a habit, and we unconsciously begin piling on the pressure on our
children without even knowing that we are leaving ourselves outside the support
process.
It is hard to imagine, but we might just be part of the
problem. Judging that our child is enjoying the sport the same amount as they
did when they first started, believing that our cheering is actually supporting
them to become what they want to be, and sometimes, neglecting the simple
question of: “is it still fun for you? Are you ok with the demands at this level?”
Because demands do change with time, and our sense of
enjoyment does not stay the same with all the ups and downs and different
variables that enter the fray.
Ensuring that the young athlete spends a day or two every
week and every couple of weeks every three months resting from organized
training or participating in other activities are ways to minimize overtraining
or burnout.
Making sure that training is age-appropriate and
understanding the needs of each biological training age is also a must for
proper development.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, a poet and a scientist, once
said: “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must
do.” So to do, we must support the development of better athletes and
individuals by providing them with the proper environment to grow; physically,
technically, and mentally.
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