Good points Lorien. I agree with what you said about overtraining often being psychological in nature. In fact, several studies on overtraining have indicated that there are many factors (including psychological and motivational) which influence whether an athlete is overtrained.
Having said that, if such a complete rest were needed in-season, I’d probably still suggest the athlete do quite a bit of fitness related activities (like swimming, cycling, etc.) to maintain their fitness for when they were ready to compete again.
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