Introduction
The primary goal of athletic training is to
enhance performance and to peak at the right
moment. To push the performance capacity to its
upper limit, relatively high amounts of intensive
exercise are assumed to be necessary. Conse-
quently, athletes are often balancing on the edge
between training and overtraining. One of the
most difficult parts of the training process is to
find the optimal balance between training and
recovery. A correct balance between training and
recovery is of utmost importance, since the dif-
ference between winning and losing is small.
Snyder and Foster (1994) reported that in the
1988 Olympic speedskating event in Calgary, the
difference in average velocity between all gold
and silver medal performances was 0.3%, while
the mean difference between all the gold medal-
ists and the fourth places was 1.3%. Similar dif-
ferences can be found in other sports.
Unfortunately, few scientific data exist about
the optimal amount of training for peak per-
formance. The relatively scarce data available
indicates that there appears to be an inverted U-
shaped relationship between training volume
and increase in performance. It is assumed that
there is an optimal amount of training which will
yield optimal performances (Fig. 37.1). However,
this optimal amount of training is poorly
defined, and passing this ‘gray’ area may lead to
overtraining. Proper nutrition, consisting of ade-
quate carbohydrate intake, may enhance recov-
ery, and consequently may play a significant role
to optimize the training process by increasing the
training loads that can be sustained.
The actual adaptation concludes the recovery
phase and, therefore, recovery is one of the most
important components of the training process.
Too many athletes and coaches lay too much
emphasis on the training but pay too little atten-
tion to recovery. Although little is known about
recovery, it appears that the time required for
the recovery phase is not always the same and
depends among other things on several factors,
such as: the volume of training, individual
factors, and nutrition. It has been shown that
after exercise, glycogen synthesis can be opti-
mized by starting to consume easily absorbable
carbohydrates immediately after exercise in an
amount of 1–2 g · kg–1body weight. Although
direct evidence is still lacking, carbohydrate
intake may indirectly also enhance other com-
ponents of the recovery process. Carbohydrate
ingestion stimulates insulin secretion, which is a
powerful stimulator of protein synthesis, one of
the key processes for recovery and adaptation.
When exercise and the concomitant distur-
bance in homeostasis are not matched by ade-
quate recovery, an athlete is actually overdoing
or overtraining, and may become overloaded or
overtrained. In order to obtain optimal results in
sports, it is important to detect too much training
or incomplete recovery as soon as possible.
Although overtraining is a general term, it may
include different entities. Based on the pathogen-
esis and affected organ systems, three different
types of overtraining can be distinguished: