Ep.25 Lee Bell: Understanding overtraining in strength training

The Health Scientist Podcast

Lee is a strength and conditioning / sport and exercise science lecturer based at Sheffield Hallam University. He has a publication background in athlete performance, with a special interest in strength sport fatigue. Lee is also co-director at TRA Performance Education, an education platform for coaches and trainers to develop their skills and knowledge.

TRA Performance Education Website

TRA Performance Education Facebook

Lee's Instagram

In this episode we cover:

• Lee's love for science, training and educating people and how it's lead to his career in educating coaches
• The importance of making academic research in sports science applicable to coaches and practitioners
• The difficulties of getting ethical approval for many experiments in strength and conditioning science, especially overtraining.
• The compromises that are necessary in developing relevant experiments in sports science
• The relevance of Lee's research into fatigue in sports training
• The importance of fatigue to sports training and improving performance
• What are functional overreaching, non-functional overreaching and overtraining?
• The symptoms of overreaching and overtraining and how long they can last in athletes.
• How does overreaching/overtraining affect strength and performance
• The difficulty in diagnosing overtraining syndrome in athletes
• The lack of research on overtraining in strength sports
• The importance of coaches knowing their athletes well enough to be able to monitor fatigue and prevent overreaching from developing into overtraining.
• The role of other life stresses in developing overreaching and what other factors can contribute.
• Lee's hopes to develop ways to teach coaches how to identify when athletes are at risk of overtraining
• The challenge of understanding science and staying on top of the ever expanding body of literature
• Why you're not evidence based if you haven't watched videos of rats bench-pressing on youtube
• How to design a training plan to induce overtraining in strength athletes
• Lee's plans for his PhD research into overtraining