Definition, Types, Symptoms, Findings, Underlying Mechanisms, and Frequency of Overtraining and Overtraining Syndrome

From an operational standpoint, overtraining can be defined as stress > recovery (regeneration) imbalance, that is, too much stress combined with too little time for regeneration –In this context, stress summarizes all individual training, non-training, and competition-dependent stress factors,–Particularly, additional exogenous non-training stress factors, such as social, educational, occupational, economic, nutritional factors, travel, and endogenous factors (genetic predisposition) exacerbate the risk of a resulting overtraining syndrome in a completely individual manner .The term overtraining syndrome describes an impaired state of health which is caused by overtraining and characterized by particular findings.