Spring is around the corner and we are coming off a very light winter. Locally, many of our areas athletes have already started an aggressive training schedule. Each year the Northwest adds more and more races from marathons to triathlons, biking and swimming events. The push to be in peak condition before our famous Bloomsday run in Spokane has become a top priority. All of this can be a perfect recipe for overtraining.

Training, like most things, needs to be approached with planning and moderation for most. Elite athletes have mastered the blend or intense training with good nutrition and plenty of rest days when needed. For many new or inexperienced athletes, overtraining can become a concern and something that can sneak up on you with little notice. Overtraining can start out slow with mild bouts of fatigue and slow recovery, but over time can lead to what is called adrenal insufficiency.

If adrenal insufficiency becomes part of the reason you're hitting the wall, fighting fatigue and having a drop in performance, it will be difficult to correct easily. Adrenal insufficiency is a hormonal disorder caused by your adrenal glands not producing enough of certain hormones and it can become a devastating problem for your health.

Adrenal insufficiency can be triggered by over exercising, but it can also happen to people who are under mental and emotional stress as well. Some people refer to adrenal insufficiency as adrenal fatigue, which is not recognized as a medical condition. Adrenal insufficiency, however, can be diagnosed by taking a blood test and treated with plenty of rest, downtime from exercise and medications such as corticosteroids.

When you put your body through the physical stress of training to the point of overtraining, an imbalance occurs. This imbalance between training and recovery in turn leads to fatigue and a reduction in your psychological abilities that can severely impact your performance. The impact can become so bad that your ability to function from day to day can become difficult.

It is not easy to understand the symptoms when an athlete has compromised their physical and psychological abilities to adapt to their training regimen. These symptoms of overtraining can manifest themselves in many ways. First and foremost, if you are tuned into your body, you start to notice a drop in general performance, slow muscle recovery, quicker than normal glycogen depletion, you may sweat more and stay fatigued longer. If you have high stress levels in life and you are overtraining, it becomes more pronounced. Adrenal insufficiency can become a serious medical concern accompanied by dehydration, disorientation, weight loss, low blood pressure, nausea and diarrhea.

Overtraining does not always lead to adrenal insufficiency. In most cases, the onset of overtraining can be managed by getting sufficient recovery time planned into your training program. If you do not get enough rest and recovery time, then the healing and repair process cannot occur and your performance drops and, in some cases, declines rapidly. If this imbalance between excess training and inadequate rest continues over time, then the repeated stress of training gets to a point where rest is no longer adequate to allow for recovery.

At this point is when adrenal insufficiency can start to be seen in some people. It is very important to note that the longer you overtrain, the more down time and rest will be needed to reverse the condition. In some cases, it can take months for a full recovery with medical care. Since exercise can be addictive, the prospect of a long period of inactivity due to rest and recovery can bring anxiety to those of us that love our daily fitness routines.

The following are a few common signs of overtraining:

* Fatigue

* Increased resting heart rate

* Decreased heart rate

* Increased resting blood pressure

* Decreased maximal power output

* Decreased sports performance

* Slower recovery after exercise

* Decreased appetite

* Decreased desire to exercise

* Increased irritability and depression

Avoiding the problems related to overtraining can be very simple by including rest and recovery into your fitness regimen. Keep in mind that the point of training hard is to break your body down and make you weaker. What makes you stronger to form a solid cardiovascular and muscular system is the rest and recovery stage. Physiological improvements you're looking for from exercise only occur during rest and recovery periods. This is how our bodies are designed so we can adapt to physical stress. Exercise forces us to adapt to the consistent conditioning of maximal loading of your key cardiovascular and muscular systems, which is why we exercise.

Only when conditioning is done correctly, by leveraging rest and recovery, will you see significant improvements without the effects of overtraining. These improvements will lead to increases in cardio strength, better glycogen or fuel stores along with improvements to your mitochondrial enzyme systems within your muscle cells.

Overtraining and chronic overtraining can have different stages that range from the transient state of "overreaching" which may be alleviated with a single day of rest to full blown adrenal insufficiency. If you allow yourself to become chronic overtrained, you will feel the effects of hormonal and inflammatory imbalances along with psychological impairments that can take months to correct.

There are a number of great books on building great exercise regimens or work with a fitness professional to ensure your workouts are balanced with recovery in mind. Take a look at how the elite athletes plan aggressive training programs around great nutrition and scheduled recovery as key aspects to their performance improvements. Do not let overtraining become an issue for your spring and summer workouts and races.

Judd Jones is a director for the Hagadone Corporation.