ABSTRACT
Many high-level athletes complete large volumes of intensive physical training to improve performance. Unfortunately for the athlete, excessive physical training, incomplete recovery and high general stress may manifest in the form of reduced performance and poor health which is now referred to as overreaching. Symptoms of overreaching and overtraining have been reported to occur in 30-50% of high level soccer players during a competitive season (Lehmann et al., 1992; Naessens et al., 2000). However, there is a lack of consensus as to what are valid and reliable early identifiers of overreaching in the findings of most previous studies examining this area (Urhausen and Kindermann, 2002). Furthermore, to date, there have only been a few studies that have reported on physiological or biochemical changes with overreaching and overtraining in team sport performances (Naessens et al., 2000; Filaire et al., 2001). Therefore, the aim of this research was to identify predictors of changes in as an early identifier of excessive fatigue in team sport participants.
