Chronic Overtraining Syndrome?

So some of you may remember the thread I started when my son had a strange bout of soreness that lasted a week from attending a technical camp (As in not intensive, just focused on drilling to learn).

His body eventually came back from that. But we adapted to always include more rest in his routine. We figured out that he could do 3 days of work that included 1 day of intense wrestling with some lifting afterward, and then two days of primarily lifting, and then three days of rest and he would be refreshed the following week. He had by far some of the most amazing improvements on this schedule, totally dominating competitions.

Later that year, he went into high school into an "elite" program that is ranked in the country in wrestling.

Their regiment included 6 days a week of training, including heavy lifting, heavy cardio/crossfit style circuts, and heavy wrestling, often all three on the same day. This is the stage of an athlete's life where the "good parent" is supposed to step away and not be involved. So I basically tried to do that. But it was very clear that something was wrong almost right away.

I was never allowed to observe practices or training sessions. So I had to go by what glimpses I would get to see when he went to scrimmages. As the first few weeks went on I saw a dramatic decline in fast-reaction time, and an athlete who was getting weaker and slower in general. I started to inquire about it, and the coaches basically gave me cryptic responses. The thing about this school is, they have had some problem parents in the past, and even had one on their staff so it felt like they were overcompensating with me to make some sort of point. But I was very careful not to be rude or arrogant. I would voice my concerns politely and mention what had worked for him before.

Through the entire thing, I watched my son decline more and more. He told them himself that what they were doing was not working for him. Kids in the room that he used to totally destroy were starting to gain ground on him. And his technique began to be impossible to execute properly. When this would happen, the coaches would blame it on his choice of techniques. They also kept saying his body was going to "adapt" to what they were doing.

There was an elite event coming up and they wanted him to go, they approached me about it and I said it was up to him. He stated that he would do it if they would allow him to get a deep tissue massage and take a couple days off to recover from it. They replied "We are not in a position to take time off right now...." as if they would get fined or something.

I took video of the wrestling I was able to get and compared it to his competition videos from just a few weeks earlier and it was very obvious he was not improving but the opposite. He and I would go over the video and he would tell me that he was not even capable of holding the proper positions he uses for his techniques anymore. And his legs were so depleted that if he took a shot he was not going to be able to finish it.

I tried to trust the "process" as wrestling coaches try to tell parents to do all the time. I asked them when they thought he was going to peak, and they said towards the end of december. A couple weeks into December he went to a competition finally and his reaction time was totally shot. Anyone who wanted his leg would have it when just a month and a half prior nobody of that competition level would even get close. He fell out of position a lot and basically abandoned shooting altogether and replaced it with slide bys and upper body techniques, and his leg riding movements went from being rock solid to getting him reversed.

We again looked at the video, and he explained to me what was going on at practice and how it was directly impacting his techniques. And how his legs were always feeling heavy.

His appetite and sleep both started to be wrecked and at that point I finally decided to put my foot down and not take no for an answer from his coaches. I still stayed tactful, and polite but I was not going to be hushed anymore. They responded by telling me that they would no longer in any way discuss his training. They had mentioned that they wanted him to advocate for himself, but he made it very clear to me that they were not listening to him at all. At this point he was supposed to be "peaking" in two weeks according to them.

With disturbed sleep and appetite suppressed there was no way they were "building" anything. I called a lot of experts I knew, including a wrestler who started for Penn State a few years ago (For those of you who don't follow College Wrestling, Penn State is insanely dominant. Their athletes are rarely injured, and are always fresh throughout the season.) I described what they were having him do, and he said it was totally wrong. And that the "heavy legs" was a huge red flag. And he mentioned that a lot of these "elite" wrestling high school programs produce athletes who's career is basically over by the time they get to college. He gave me some details about what Penn State does instead, I won't put that here as he asked me to keep it more or less secret as the coach of Penn State prefers it that way. But the short form is he is very big on recovery, and his stance on recovery is radically different then basically anyone else who coaches wrestling. And that yes you work hard, but it's a question of when, and for how long. And the answers he gave me again were radically different then anything I had ever heard.

I called another former college wrestler who was at one time an assistant at Ohio State and then Cornell. Who was himself an NCAA Champion and described the situation, and he told me the story of how one of the kids from our school got recruited to Cornell and his career was over before he ever got to them.

I talked to a wrestler from our area who was part of one of the other dominant teams, and he described that they loved their coach who was a legend in our state but that he drained every drop out of the high school kids in his program and as a consequence none of them ever did anything in college. So we both paused for a moment and tried to remember the last time anyone from the school my son went to actually accomplished anything in college, we realized it was the same thing. None. Some of them would get recruited but often would not start, and generally would have careers that fizzled.

I talked to his actual cross-fit instructor who always stressed the importance of rest, and when I described the lack of reaction time he said that was a classic sign of damage to one's nervous system.

So with all of this, I pulled the plug. I told them to take my son off the roster. And he breathed a huge sigh of relief when I told him he didn't have to return to practice. The coaches of course acted like I was being unreasonable and continued to assure me that his body was just going to suddenly "adapt" all of a sudden. I told them I had no idea what they thought was going to happen in the next two weeks to "peak" him as at this point he was ground into the floor. And that there was no way I was just going to let them shut the door in my face. I wasn't whining to them about varsity time, or matches or any of the things "problem" parents complain about. I was telling them they were rapidly burning out my son.

So, I gave him two weeks of full rest. Got him some massages and hot tub soaks and he started to feel better. Once he felt 100% we returned to training but with me using the methods that we had used before and he was able to get his speed and reaction time back. But it was like something in his ability to recover was "broken". It would take much longer to feel better after training. I always gave it to him. We went to sports medicine doctors and they kind of shrugged and sent us home as there was no obvious injury at that time. Looking into OTS myself I found that it's something that a lot of people in the profession don't even believe exists. They told me he should be fine to go back if he felt ok.

We moved away from that town and I basically focused on just finding a place I could afford. The new town had a wrestling team that was not very good. But he decided to give it another try, and this coach at least would allow me in the room and hear me out about things if I was trying to help him understand my son. (Or well...said he would)

He won some extremely high profile matches, taking out kids far older then him and ended up undefeated and ranked #4, but it would take him days to recover from any competitions. The training regiment of this team was far less intense and did far less with weights and no circuits to speak of. But they still went 5 days a week right up until competition days. I warned them to go easy on my son's legs as even before all this we had established years ago that if you want to condition his legs it had to be done in the off season as they don't recover well. But then I ran into another problem, the coach who wants everyone to do what the "team" is doing.

For those of you who are not familiar with how "team" works for wrestling, they go out in meets 1 person from every weight class goes out and tries to score points for their team. You get points for how you defeat your opponent, with pins giving you the most for example.

So in essence, as a team sport wrestling is a series of rounds where you send out one teammate at a time to try and score points. But a lot of American coaches cling to the "team sport" ideas of sports like football, or basketball and demand that everyone do the same thing so far as training/conditioning and often technique.

For perspective, I talked to the head coach of another ranked team in our state that has been dominant of a different division for the past 10 years. I shared with him a scientific study where they followed a soccer team for two full years doing bloodwork and extensive tests and arrived at the conclusion that it was impractical to expect your entire team to follow the same training regiment. As everyone's recovery rates are different. And that everyone's physiology was different and would impact this. (So for example, the fact that my son's legs don't respond well to sprints, lunges, etc unless you are going to give him what would be "extra" rest)

So he said "Well that puts us in an awkward position...because I can't tell your son he doesn't have to run sprints but everyone else does....It wouldn't be fair..." So I said "Ok...so how do you determine that everyone will do then?" To which he said "Well....I pick maybe my 3 most athletic guys and design everything off of what they can do..." and in literally the same breath he says "That's probably not fair to the rest of the team...."

I talked on a lot of wrestling forums about this issue, and generally got either haughty nasty testosterone ridden replies that confirmed that this is how it's done. And a few actually educated professionals who agreed with me. And what I said that they agreed with was:

It is absolutely idiotic to train your entire wrestling team the exact same way. And that basically, these coaches were KNOWINGLY ruining maybe 20-30% of their athletes somehow believing it was the only "fair" thing to do. I encountered a lot of personalities that it was clear would literally rather force a wrestler to do things that will make them lose matches they don't have to then to ever have their "authority" challenged.

It started to become clear to me more then ever, that often the same people who will accuse parents of making it about themselves and not their kids, who would constantly repeat the mantra of "Well this is for the kids...." were doing things that literally sabotaged the careers of kids for the sake of their own egos or pride and/or incompetence.

So, back to my son. Against my recommendations the new coach had them run sprints on a Thursday, then weighted lunges on a Friday with competition on Saturday. He woke up with his right leg buckling when he put weight on it. We showed up and the coach flat out accused him of lying about being injured. And pressured him into going ahead and trying to wrestle. He wrestled once, and won his match but his leg had given out a few times. And that can be a lot of bad things. He told his coach he was not going to continue. So the coach made a special point within earshot of me to make sure the matches were listed as forefits and not medical forefits. I took him to a doctor immediately and he had a severe quad strain. A completely preventable injury. And just in time to prevent him from going to the state tournament. The coach was still skeptical until I showed him the paper. I took him back to sports medicine and FINALLY they diagnosed my son with Over Training syndrome. But again he was told he could do whatever he felt he could do. The medical industry doesn't really understand the issue unless you talk to specific experts.

He did physical therapy and was out for a month for his quad, trained for a bit with me, went to what should have been a fairly easy tournament. And he was again still not right. He woke up the day afterward and all the muscles on his body were at a 7 out of 10 on the pain scale. He begged me not to go to school and was willing to not play video games or anything and just to lay in bed. That pain faded down to a 4 on the pain scale but his body has now been in that state ever since. And that was in march. Depending on the day every muscle in his body will hurt at a 4-6 on the pain scale. It feels like DOMS, but it never goes away.

So then I had to try and navigate the medical industry. I told him we were done training at all until we could get to the bottom of it. He had three full months of rest. No change. The few doctors that will even discuss this with me say that it is basically a multiple-disciplinary issue and that it really becomes a diagnosis of omission. I have to take him to various specialists to be sure he doesn't have some other illness. Rheumatology, Endocrinology, etc. Sports Medicine literally turned us away and said they don't treat it.

At this point he just helps me run my practices and he takes some satisfaction in that. But he is very angry that he is in this situation and I can't blame him. He and I design and discuss our training methods together. So he is well aware of what a good practice looks like. And in order to participate in school sports we were always in a situation where people were incompetent and making him do things he KNEW were not good for him. He had been wrestling since he was 6. The research I have done into this issue is grim. If he has OTS it can take months and even years to go away, and there have been reports of people having it for life.

He and I basically came to a couple of hard line conclusions.

For Me: NEVER AGAIN was I going to be in a position where I had to "ask permission" for my son to rest. And NEVER AGAIN would I ever just leave him in the hands of other coaches. That ship has sailed. If he is ever to compete again, it will be with me, or someone else he trusts.

For Him: The next time a coach tells him to do something idiotic like run sprints and lunges the day before a major tournament, or train for 6 days a week with no real rest he was just going to walk out.

FOR THE FORUM: Has anyone ever experienced basically all of the muscle tissue in your body being in pain every day, low energy even if you do sleep. Difficulty getting to sleep. Appetite that fluctuates? Stretching doesn't help. (Even tried yoga). Full rest doesn't help. Light activity doesn't help. Just sore muscles as if you hit it hard at the gym, but the muscles never stop being sore?

 

Mate, correct me if I'm wrong, but is is it 2 or 3 different children you have tried to turn into elite wrestlers, and they all have had unusual symptoms and have eventually quit.

You obviously won't take this on board, but there's a good chance the common denominator in this is you.

 

I don't have experience with something like this, but I suppose it is a good thing you stopped this kind of training. Is your son actually enjoying wrestling and competing? This sounds like a rather bad experience. I would say it is best to listen to one's body. If he knows he can't do sprints or other stuff, tell the coach, and just don't do them. What is the point if it is hindering training? I've never had someone tell me to push through the pain or work harder. But then again, I've never done any competitive sports, I do stuff for fun. And actually, this is exactly what makes me kind of dislike competititve martial arts.
I met people who used to compete for their club, because it was a sport karate or taekwondo club, but did it just because it was expected of them, not really enjoyed it. Then perhaps quit later, maybe because of injuries or maybe because at 25 they were simply too old... Or that simply when you are not competing, the instructor won't pay you much attention and/or the main reason for them to train you is gone, I guess. I find this awful.
Do sports to improve your health, to be stronger and to be able to do sports for your whole life. Destroying your body in highschool just for a few competitions, no matter on which level just doesn't sound worth it.
It is no real advice for me. But if your son has health issues like this, I would consider just going easier, maybe abandoning the competitions or doing something safely he can see a good progress in. But if he wants to do what he is doing and you sort of know what does and does not work on him, find him a good coach that would listen to him, I suppose. And on days when he doesn't feel like training, just don't.
The way you describe it also sounds like both you and him find his training very important. And failures like this, I imagine, would put a lot of mental pressure on him, on top of what he has to endure from his coaches. So I wonder if he seriously still enjoys it. This stress may also contibute to his fatigue and slower recovery, perhaps. Try to support his decisions and don't pressure him into anything. Maybe let him try something more technical and less strenuous?

 

There are 2 types of clubs: filters and forges.
- A filter club filters out those who aren't able to handle their training methodology.
- A forge club changes its methodology to suit the individuals.

Forges tend to focus on enjoyment. Filters focus on medal attainment.

When it comes to childhood athletic development: the USA has a problem with aculture early specialisation in specific sports and a culture of pushing kids to be "elite". Let them be kids.

Elite performance comes when you're around 26 to 35 in most sports, not when you're a child.

Additionally I've taken the view that we should build a life long passion: 99% of kids won't ever be elite so we should focus on 1). Safety 2). Enjoyment 3). Building an individual skillset.

 

Congrats on the brownbelt by the way.

To prove my point: why do you still do jiu jitsu?
I imagine its because you enjoy developing your own personal style? I've been trying to instill this into the younger guys heads. Some are 14 and want to compete in MMA and train way too hard and too intensely.
so when I train with them I have been very clear that I want to help them develope their own jiu jitsu.
They can develop their own personal jiu jitsu that will evolve with them if they can it a little easier, there's no need to smash yourself into the ground at such a young age when you can have this much fun forever by just training a little lighter a couple sessions a week.

 

I cannot imagine the attrition rate in American sports. For every Bo Nickal or Jordan Burroughs there must be 10,000 people who drop by the wayside with burnout, injury, disappointment and shattered dreams. Or their parent's shattered dreams.

 

For every Bo Nickal there are a couple dozen guys doing very nicely due to the university education their sports scholarship earned them

Why single out the US? I suspect the attritional rate in east European countries is the same, and in the UK for that matter in rugby and football.

If you want to be the best at something you have to train hard, in the states being good at a sport can be the way to a university education and a better life that is something worth working hard for, is it worth getting injured over that's a decision each person has to make BUT anyone who has done any competitive sport at any decent level knows injuries come with the territory.

So does wrecking your body if you want to be the best, that's just the fact of life, but no teenager is going to listen to you if you tell them that truth, just like we didn't listen when we were younger if we are honest

 

Cheers mate, I had been avoiding grading days for a few years and thought I'd avoided the possibility long term!

I suppose the real reason I still train, is mixed, part of it is that I need a good immediate reason to do fitness work so I live longer, another part is that it's a ready made social situation, and another part is that's it's great to able to beat up on the white belts. I think that means I'm a lazy introvert with anger issues...... #BJJlifestyle

 

Singling out the USA because OP is from the USA and has been pushing his kids on this site for years to "be the best" and they all end up quitting the sport he puts them in.

Additionally the US education system is messed up so kids need to excel at sport to get access to cheaper university.

We should remove professionalism and instead encourage passion so we don't end up with poor kids in the wealthiest country pushing to "be the best" while their less talented (but equally poor) friends end up as part of the obesity crisis and not getting the same opportunities

 

The OPs actions are not unique to the states and their system it speaks much more to his actions as a parent than to anything else.

Remove professionalism and you remove the financial backing needed to run programs in the first place.

 

I 100% agree

It gets into a more political conversation and a conversation about how amateurist pursuits are only really available to the middle class because of lack of funding.

I would argue that funding wider programs should be done as a public health and wellbeing initiative because uts the right thing to do and would lead to better health and happiness outcomes for citizens.

But I imagine many colleges wouldn't do that for various funding reasons. Damn I remember the Title XI fight that wrestling had, it seems like there's such a limited pot of money allocated to certain sports.

 

I can't express much of an opinion on this as the UK approach to sport is a lot different.

Training since 6, to days a week as how old now?

Did you train like this when you were their age?

Sorry to thread hijack: @Dead_pool got brown? Nice one

 

Cheers mate,I always wondered why new brownbelts seemed to go super hard in rolling, now I know it's because they are old and tired, all the 21 year old bluebelts want to out wrestle them, and it's easier to rest from top mount/rearmount.

 

Well, I didn't have a girl slam my daughter on her head and give her permeant concussion symptoms. That was another coach.

And I didn't insanely overtrain my son. And in fact, told them what their training was doing to him, and they didn't want to talk about it.

It's two children. I now train other people's children, and some drive an hour and a half or from Canada for me to do it. One of them just won a national title, and another took 2nd and 3rd at the same tournament entering two divisions.

I literally did the thing you are supposed to do and turned my kids over to other people, and both times paid for it.

Now, if you have some way to explain to me that it is somehow MY fault that other coaches overtrained him, I am all ears. I was not in any way involved in determining what he did.

 

It's funny you bring up Bo Nickal. His father coached him since he was 6, and made sure to get the coaching jobs at his middle and high school to be sure he was able to take care of his son through the entire process. And thankfully he went to Penn State, that has a strong respect for rest and recovery.

 

That's not how this works. I agree that he should not have been doing them. But when your child enters the school sports system you basically have no authority at all unless you managed to get the job to be coach there. He did enjoy wrestling and competing when I was coaching him. He doesn't now for obvious reasons.

As I explained in the OP, there are a few problems at work.

1. American Wrestling coaches in schools don't believe they can implement any sort of individualized training. So they create a training regiment based on what they think their best athletes can do. They know that the science says that everyone's recovery is different. They know that the science says you should be making such judgements particularly when dealing with athletes at puberty while taking into account their maturation level. They just throw their hands up and say "Well we don't have enough staff to provide that kind of individual programming...." and if your kid doesn't respond to it, they just tell you that your kid is not suited to the sport while muttering under their breath that they are a pussy.

2. A kind of bleed over from the "Team sports" mentality of sports like football and basketball. You have to do what "the team" is doing. And you begin to realize that to some coaches this is so important to them that they would rather see a kid lose matches then not do what they are told. Even if it is detrimental.

It doesn't really work that way. Again the attitude is you either do what they tell you or you don't get to participate. And if what they are telling you is detrimental then somehow it's your fault, or your child is simply not good enough for the sport. I removed him from the school. I also ceased all his training. The point of this post is to ask if people have experience with OTS or Over Training Syndrome. And it's just turned into a way for people to take pot shots at me and writing fiction stories about my parenting style and literally not say one word about Over Training Syndrome.

I find whatever he wants to do important. He chose this. Now he has asked to get into guitar and I spend more money on that then I ever did on wrestling. I didn't ask for parenting advice. I asked if people had experience with overtraining syndrome. He enjoyed it until they ruined his body. When the coaches would not respond to what was happening to him I pulled him off their roster and nobody has forced him to do anything since.

 

I spoke to high level people about this. The issue at the elite level of high school wrestling is they create a training regiment based on what they think a few of their athletes are best suited to. And they know full well that this is not going to actually work for all of their roster.

They know that science has shown that everyone's recovery needs are different.

They know that science has shown that you have to take into account particularly at the puberty ages the maturation level of the athletes involved as all of their testosterone levels are different.

They know they are likely to ruin a significant number of their athletes.

They do nothing to change their approach, instead they will tell you that your child must not be suited to the sport, romanticize the issue saying "wrestlers are a rare breed" and mutter under their breath that your child is a pussy. Even if they had a very successful career before coming to them, and are now ruined.

I agree with what you said here: "Elite performance comes when you're around 26 to 35 in most sports, not when you're a child."

The problem with wrestling in America, is you have to be elite in high school to be accepted into a college program to even be able to compete past age 18. So people are trying to navigate how best to do that.

But the PRIMARY question I asked, is does anyone have experience with OTS, or symptoms I have described.

 

This is a pretty ridiculous mischaracterization. I have two kids. Both won national titles. I sought advice from other people during various stages.

I didn't "put them in" sports. That was a decision they made. This post is about situations that went on when I was not the one coaching. It's like you didn't even bother to read what went on. They didn't quit from anything I was doing, they quit from things that happened to them when they were at other practices that I had nothing to do with. But you are writing a fiction story of what took place so you can take potshots at a parent on the internet.

We certainly agree on that.

So do you have anything to say about the actual question I asked? Or is your participation in this conversation basically going to be about writing fiction stories about what took place and what my role in this was?

FOR THE FORUM: Has anyone ever experienced basically all of the muscle tissue in your body being in pain every day, low energy even if you do sleep. Difficulty getting to sleep. Appetite that fluctuates? Stretching doesn't help. (Even tried yoga). Full rest doesn't help. Light activity doesn't help. Just sore muscles as if you hit it hard at the gym, but the muscles never stop being sore?

 

What "actions" do you think I participated in?

I literally just explained that my training regiment for him involved FAR more rest. That when turning him over and stepping away this happened to him.

What "actions as a parent" did I take that caused this?

It's interesting that you can't resist the urge to take potshots at a parent, but I didn't have anything to do with this other then finally putting my foot down and removing him from the situation. I had to intervene because the coaches were destroying him.

Did you have anything to add about the ACTUAL purpose of this thread? It's amazing to me that I am asking about Over Training Syndrome and all I got was responses about what kind of a parent I am from people who have never been to my home, never attended any of my practices, etc.

"FOR THE FORUM: Has anyone ever experienced basically all of the muscle tissue in your body being in pain every day, low energy even if you do sleep. Difficulty getting to sleep. Appetite that fluctuates? Stretching doesn't help. (Even tried yoga). Full rest doesn't help. Light activity doesn't help. Just sore muscles as if you hit it hard at the gym, but the muscles never stop being sore?"

 

So why would I not take this on board? I just went and re-read all of the threads I have started about my kids on this forum in the injury section. Most had a few things in common:

1. I would post to ask if other athletes had experienced anything similar to what my kids were going through if doctors were having difficulty diagnosing a given problem.

2. I would then have to defend myself from people virtue signaling and witch hunting me as an obvious evil parent with little to no information. Making up theories that I must be forcing my kids to do sports.

3. Little to no discussion of the ACTUAL question would take place. And what I did glean had to come only from spending a lot of time sifting through made up theories about me as a parent to finally come to actual answers to my questions.

So yes, I am correcting you because you are wrong. I have two kids. One of them had an injury that the doctors were mis-diagnosing at one point. Her massage therapist finally corrected that. And a mob of people here told me to ignore doctors who said to get her into physical therapy. And made up theories that I was refusing to allow her to rest, despite the fact that she had rested for a full month before beginning physical therapy. Despite the fact that her medical doctors were telling her to go to physical therapy. It turned out that the problem was her initial physical therapists were not properly supervising her. And when I switched therapists she was fine within a couple weeks, after being with the previous one for months.

Then another coach had a girl slam her on her head who outweighed her by 65 lbs when she was about 105. That is what ended her career.

Now I have described a situation where another coach insanely over trained my son. And what I find VERY ironic is that in the thread about my daughter I mentioned earlier, all you guys were doing was obsessing about how I AS THE PARENT must be overtraining my kids. I describe to you a situation where his high school coach was literally making the kid do six days a week of work including multiple crossfit style workouts, heavy lifting, and heavy live wrestling for 6 days a week for two months. And all you guys can talk about is how this must again be something I did. Not the coaches who assigned that insane regiment. It's somehow still my fault. I can't even complain about SOMEONE ELSE overtraining my son lol.

I should have known better. The usual suspects are doing the exact same nonsense they were in the previous thread.

I am not the common denominator. Allowing other people to control the situations that my kids were training in, is. Which is not a mistake I will ever make again.

In both of those situations that lead to my kids quitting, they were circumstances in which I had surrendered control over to someone else. That's the common denominator.

Now, do you have any comments about OTS? The thing I was asking about?