Yin-Ju “Megan” Chen

Nonlinear Movement Analysis in Understanding Overreaching and Overtraining in Female Athletes

While athletes must constantly balance high training loads and adequate recovery to achieve maximal performance, the absence of an objective gold standard biomarker often prevents the identification of the progression along fatigue-overreaching-overtraining. Current practices rely on combinations of performance tests, subjective markers and other linear measures which often identify only the onset of state rather than the early transition. Female athletes remain understudied, despite evidence shows that hormonal fluctuations might influence movement variability and neuromuscular control. Nonlinear tools like Goal Equivalent Manifolds and Detrended Fluctuation Analysis quantify the temporal structure of stride-to-stride fluctuations in running and could potentially provide a sensitive and objective biomarker to assist the identification of overreaching and overtraining. This project aims to establish a nonlinear biomarker framework to detect early-warning signals of functional overreaching, non-functional overreaching, and overtraining syndrome. This will facilitate individualised, female-specific training monitoring