Although fatigue is commonly experienced in many highly demanding occupations (e.g., military, first responders, etc.), it is poorly defined. Fatigue can strongly affect occupational performance by negatively influencing the ability to interact with the world by altering the capacity to think, move, feel, see, and speak. The first step in fatigue risk management strategies is to establish a context. The context of this narrative review is to specifically describe and discuss the 6 overarching types of occupational fatigue: cognitive, physical, burnout, emotional, visual, and vocal fatigue, and how each affects varying occupations. Furthermore, fatigue type can be influenced by several intrinsic factors, such as sleep deprivation, circadian alignment, ultradian process, sleep homeostasis, and health factors. Similarly, extrinsic factors influence fatigue, such as workload, shift work, and environmental issues. Understanding the types and contributors to occupational fatigue may help clarify the context of occupational fatigue and serve to guide future occupational fatigue management.

The ability to manage the adaptive response, handle accumulated fatigue, and capitalize on the aftereffects established from training is central to the training process.

The purpose of this article is to help bring awareness of athletic recovery by useful fatigue monitoring and managing tools, such as external and internal load examples.

Joe Kenn, MA, CSCS,*D, RSCC, spoke at the NSCA's National Conference about managing fatigue in players.

Concurrent training (CT), which combines resistance exercise and energy systems conditioning, is the default approach to preparation in high-intensity intermittent (“stop and go”) team sports. This review provides an overview of CT, emphasizing its complexities and challenges in managing fatigue and optimizing performance. These complexities are specifically compounded by the variability in game demands across the season, where the presence of intensified and nonintensified competition periods necessitates a flexible and adaptive training approach. In this context, there are essential training variables to consider, including intensity, volume, session order, and recovery intervals between sessions. In addition, nontraining variables such as travel, sleep, and nutrition play a role in the fatigue experienced while training and competing. These variables interact to influence acute performance and training adaptations and can be strategically adjusted by strength and conditioning practitioners. The aim of this review is to provide a comprehensive understanding of fatigue management for practitioners in team sports, emphasizing the complexities and challenges of CT and offering simplified practical recommendations for adjusting training variables within any given microcycle.

In recent years, performance and prevention strategies have grown to include monitoring training load (TL) to understand fatigue and the potential effects of fatigue on training adaptation and performance.

Joe Kenn, MA, CSCS,*D, RSCC, spoke at the NSCA's National Conference about training and the impact of training in a fatigued state.

Learn how to identify the risks to an athlete’s health and safety associated with overtraining, as well as how to help the athlete to return to normal when they have reached overtraining/fatigue. Bryan Mann, PhD, discusses recovery methods for the tactical athlete in this talk from the 2016 NSCA TSAC Annual Training.

The “priority training system” is one method first responders can use to ensure adequate exercise while not overexerting to the point that they are too fatigued to perform their jobs.

This article is the fourth of a continuing series that examines pertinent and recent tactical strength and conditioning research reviews.