Daily Analysis of Life Demands for Athletes

The DALDA is a psychological stress response test that is peer-reviewed. Brent Rushall, Ph.D., R.Psy. Sports Science Associates, developed this gold-standard test to help athletes measure stress responses from an athletes' workout. It is now possible to measure the following:

1. Training responses that indicate an athlete is either too stressed or under-stressed;
2. The ideal amount of stress to promote the optimum level of training effort;
3. The influence of outside-of-sport stresses that interfere with the training response;
4. Initial features of over-training;
5. Reactions to travel fatigue and jet-lag; and
6. Peaking responses

The use of the DALDA should promote better coaching decisions that will assist Athletes to improve performances in a more efficient manner.

	Measuring the Occurrence of Training Stresses - The first factor to be measured should be psychological, for they occur first in the breakdown of an athlete's capacity to adapt to stress. The Daily Analysis of Life Demands for Athletes (DALDA - Rushall 1975a, 1979b, 1981a, 1981b) is a self-report sport specific tool that has been used at events such as Olympic Games by several nations to refine the quality of coaching decisions about the stress reactions of individual athletes. It has the advantage of exactly describing the stress sources and characteristics of each person. This it allows the differentiation of the individuality of the stress responses as well as providing indices of what features are normal, worse than normal and better than normal in an athlete's life and stress symptoms.

	The Training Response - Athletes in serious training usually attempt to attain a state of maximum adaptation to exercise stress. This is known as achieving the "stage of resistance" (Selye 1950) where the majority of the body's resources are applied to coping with training loads The cost of this specialized adaption is that resistance to other stresses is lowered. Diminished capacities in other areas of living are often evident when an athlete trains intensely. This means that as he or she goes through cycles of fatigue and recovery, there are a number of "symptoms" of the stress of adaptation that occur. The DALDA is a tool for measuring these.

	Monitoring Daily Training- Complete the DALDA on a daily basis for a period of 2-4 weeks. This period should start after the athlete has become used to training. It should not include the first 3 weeks of a training season. Record the symptoms as required at the same time each day, preferably before an afternoon training session. This timing will give an index of the athlete's ability to recover from the previous training session. This index establishes a stable baseline of responses over a 14-day period. Then current assessments during training are measured against this Training Response "Window".

	Excessive Training Sessions - If a data point from a day's analysis is higher than the values included in the "window", then it could be interpreted to mean that the previous session load was too hard.

	Training Sessions that are too Easy - When the number of symptoms that are recorded fall outside but below the "window", then the athlete is not being stressed by training to the degree that produces optimum adaptation.

	Monitoring Over-Training - After a period of time, athletes lose the capacity to adapt to training programs. Should this occur in athletes using the DALDA, it will be observed that the return to the "window" does not occur as easily as when the athlete is adapting. When workloads are reduced on three successive occasions and there are no outstanding stresses occurring in other aspects of the athlete's life, but a reduction in "worse-than-normal" symptoms does not occur, it can usually be determined that an over-trained state has been reached.

	Monitoring Travel Disruptions - There are other uses for the DALDA other than monitoring of training. A common one for serious athletes is the assessment of recovery from time-zone shifts ("jet-lag") and travel fatigue. The stresses that result from travel increase the number of "worse-than-normal" symptoms reported.

	Monitoring Outside Stresses - The discussion above has generally assumed that exercise stress is the only factor that is excessive in an athlete's life. That rarely is the case. Since an individual has finite capacity to handle life stress, it is possible that accumulated effects of training and other stresses may cause symptoms associate with increased stress. Thus it is essential that the possible incursion of other life stresses should be considered on a daily basis.

	Monitoring Peaking - One further valuable use of this measurement procedure is the monitoring of the peaking state. Athletes who record values in the "window" are not capable of maximum performance. A period of reduced training loads is necessary for peak performances to occur. With the DALDA, peak states are indicated when the number of "better-than-normal" symptoms increases. This is why graphs of the three classes of response are maintained.