Having finished examined the definition of overtraining in Part 3 I want to move into some other topics. Today I will focus on the idea of there being different “types” of overtraining. This will lead into a bit more detailed look of the physiology behind what is occurring in overtraining.
A-Type and B-Type Overtraining
As I imagine most readers are at least vaguely familiar with, the human nervous system is generally divided into the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system handles responses related to stress and fear. Heart rate goes up, blood pressure goes up, etc. In contrast, the parasympathetic doest the opposite, slowing heart rate, blood pressure, etc.
In a very simplistic sense you would want high sympathetic tone when you are training and increased parasympathetic tone for recovery. While I won’t get into it here, Heart Rate Variability are essentially examining the relative “dominance” of the sympathetic versus parasympathetic systems.… Keep Reading