Assessment of physical fitness, overtraining prevention and incitement to prevent doping

Present levels of training loads - which can exceed thirty hours a week for high level sportsmen - expose to overwork then to overtraining syndrom and finally to temptation of doping. At the same time testing techniques impro ve, particularly exercise tests with a linearly increasing load, and the fo llow-up of training effects on physical fitness provides more accurate data The specialized literature has developped the notions of cardiac frequency reserve and of oxygen intake reserve within the last ten years. These noti ons as those of produced poll er reserve, were applied here to assess the v entilatory threshold of 104 sportsmen (51 cyclists with high endurance and 53 team sportsmen with lower endurance) and of 223 sedentary witnesses. The y allow, when completed with absolute level of aerobic endurance, to apprec iate physical fitness of sportsmen all along sports season, to predict thei r capabilities to progress by an increase of training load or to reinforce the hypothesis of an overworking onset.