Early manifestations of overtraining in athletes in the pre-competitive period prior to the National Sports Games, Colombia 2012: a cross-sectional study

Objective: To determine the frequency of early clinical symptoms of the overtraining syndrome (OTS), in Antioquia´s athletes in the pre-competitive period prior to the Na-tional Sports Games, Colombia 2012. Materials and methods: The Sports Medicine French Society (SMFS) questionnaire was administered to 153 highly trained athletes, belonging to 28 sports disciplines. Results: Mean age of the studied athletes was 23.5 ± 5.5 years; 56.9% were men. Fre-quency of OTS early symptoms was 24.8%. The affected athletes had a greater volume of sport training (24.3 ± 10.3 vs. 19.7 ± 9.4 hours/week; p = 0.018); more commonly belonged to an individual sports discipline (81.6% vs. 55.7%; p = 0.017); more often they were studying (76.3% vs. 56.5%; p = 0.030) or in exams period (42.1 vs. 21.2%; p = 0.029) and perceived more stressful situations in the last month (62.1% vs. 16.2%; p < 0.01). Conclusions: a high frequency of early manifestations of OTS was found. It was higher in women than in men. Several individual factors, related to training and the type of sport, might be associated with these manifestations.