The word fatigue is thrown around and around and around again.
Let’s focus on the last one. What is fatigue?
Fatigue is a disruption to physiological systems that causes a decrement in athletic performance. Very simple. Very objective.
If you can usually back squat 80 kg for three reps, and you have a 2.5 m broad jump, and you feel fatigued — but you go into the gym and you hit those numbers, or better — then you are not fatigued, based on the objective measure.
You can feel fatigued, and that may be a sign of a leading indicator that fatigue is coming down the line and will cause a decrement in athletic performance. But for right now, performance baselines are your biggest friend in calculating: are you fatigued?
It’s very simple.
Now we need to define recovery.
Recovery is the return to performance baseline post-disruption.
AKA — if you can run 5 km in 19 minutes, you do that on a Wednesday, and you come back to do your second 5 km of the week on Saturday and you again run 5 km in 19 minutes, you are recovered. And thus, there is not enough cumulative fatigue to decide that you are fatigued.
You’ll start to see the theme here.
We have to be objective about things.
We can get into the nooks and crannies and constantly track data. Athlete monitoring systems at the elite level track nearly everything — heart-rate variability, wellness scores, countermovement jumps, reactive strength index, isometrics at long muscle lengths — and sometimes all this data does is create noise.
For most people reading this blog, you’re going to be playing sport at a non-professional level, or you’re going to be a serious trainee.
So how do you know if you’re fatigued?
Track your performance. Understand your baselines.
If you can match previous performance, you are not fatigued — you are recovered. Now, to add tools to your arsenal, we can look at fatigue as a spectrum.
We have:
· Leading indicators
· Concurrent indicators
· Lagging indicators
Leading indicators could be recent nutrition, sleep, stress.
Did your boss scream at you? Was it very upsetting? Then fatigue may be coming.
Then we have concurrent indicators.
Performance may still be stable, however bar velocity may be down. Rate of perceived exertion could be up. These are concurrent indicators.
Lagging indicators — shit has now hit the fan.
Desire to train drops. Mood disturbances. Appetite disturbances. Sleep disturbances.
Leading indicators we can fix, because the fatigue hasn’t come yet — they’re just indicators that it might be coming.
Concurrent indicators mean we need to take action right now — bar speed, rate of perceived exertion.
Lagging indicators — sleep, mood, appetite disruptions — we need to make drastic changes. But just remember, when talking about fatigue, remember the definition in sports physiology: Fatigue is disruption to physiological systems caused by decremented athletic performance. Recovery is the return to performance baseline post-disruption.
This should give you an objective framework going forward.
If you do not track performance meticulously over time, it is very difficult — no matter what your Whoop or smartwatch says — to know if you are recovered or fatigued.