Breaking Burnout

Are you logging a lot of miles driving to sport practices and competitions, eating dinner and/or doing homework during the rides? And don’t really like to? Are you constantly scheduling multiple team practices and games at the expense of other non-sport activities that you feel like you miss? Are you tired of a sport you once enjoyed? Is it no longer fun? Do you feel run down from running so much? Rigorous training schedules can stretch you to your limits. Olympians and 8 year olds alike need to rest at times. But knowing when it’s time to push and time to rest can be tricky. Coaches, parents, and athletes themselves often go beyond a level of activity and intensity that actually sustains or improves performance. The coach, the parent, and the athlete may say that they are driving toward having best performance, or teaching youth about discipline, but patterns of overtraining can lead to staleness, underperforming, and even burnout and depression.

The demands of sport are part of what make it fun and enjoyable, a flow activity. But, demands can become overwhelming. Many coaches have expectations about activity and intensity that create burnout in athletes rather than improved or best performances. A big factor in burnout comes from coach and parent messages, athletes may internalize these and carry them in and out of sport to adulthood. These may include inappropriate expectations and overemphasis on rankings or winning. Pressure, perfectionism, and physical demands of training may lead to physical and psychological stress, and this turns into burnout over time when it is too much for the individual and the stress is unmanaged.

Many of you know burned out athletes, or maybe you are one, yourself. Some current data supports that burnout is experienced by many athletes. Various research studies conclude: 72% of college athletes reported staleness during their seasons, 47% reported burnout at some point during their college sport career; at least 60% of elite distance runners had at least one episode of staleness in their running careers, and 30% of sub-elite but highly trained runners experienced burnout; individual athlete sports may be related to higher levels of burnout than team sports; once you get stale, you are more likely to be stale again; coaches and trainers are at a high risk for burnout, much like the athletes they assist (Weinberg & Gould, 2011). Based on the literature, experience working with athletes, and my own athletic experience, burnout is common. Sport performance suffers- most athletes want to be doing their best, that’s not possible if they’re struggling with burnout. We all want to enjoy ourselves in life, sport is an avenue for that. Without awareness of symptoms that suggest it’s all too much, sport can create more suffering than enjoyment.

So let’s get our terms clear. What exactly are overtraining, staleness, burnout, and related concepts?

Definitions

Individualized Training
One skill that gives an athlete an edge over competitors is arousal management. Athletes that can manage their energy, being aware of what is just the right amount of excitement, the right amount of calm and relaxation, at the right times, will be able to channel energy into their performance in a way that enhances it. For example, some athletes need to be very cool and quiet prior to competition, some need to talk and be loud and move around a lot. Each has an optimal level of arousal that readies them to perform at their best. Similar to this, managing energy in terms of practice sessions and training is equally important. What is negative overtraining for one athlete, may be an optimal training zone for another. This is why it is so important for parents, coaches, and trainers to individualize training programs- some athletes will need more rest than others in order to have optimal performances. The individual athlete has to have a say about activity level and intensity.

Periodized training
This is the strategy of engaging in high volume and high intensity training loads, followed by lower training loads, a.k.a. rest or taper. The goal is to condition oneself so that performance peaks at a specific date or time frame, for a race or competition. The trick is to slowly increase the load so that optimal adaptation occurs and injury and staleness do not. For those who may be negatively addicted (see definition below) to exercise, tapering and rest may be very difficult.

Overtraining
A few days to a few weeks of excessive training loads that are at or near maximal capacity, max efforts. Overload creates adaptation, after rest and recovery, resulting in more strength or fitness and improved performance. If training volume is too much, if there’s too much stress (constant soreness, negative coaching behavior, parental pressure, work stress, family issues, etc.), or lack of rest, overtraining will instead lead to deteriorated performance. So overloading can lead to gains or losses in performance, as well as no changes at all. Negative overtraining first leads to staleness, then to burnout. The right amount of overtraining varies highly by the individual, so what leads to improved performance for one athlete, may decrease another’s.

Positive vs. negative exercise addiction
Positive exercise addiction means one incorporates fitness into a daily routine and this enhances quality of life, while not interfering with other important things such as family, relationships, work, etc. Some refer to it as a “healthy habit.” Negative addiction to exercise means one is consumed by exercise and fitness at the expense of well being. An exercise addict will continue exercise activity even when injury could be made worse, and when it is interfering with work and social relationships to the extent that everything “takes a backseat” to the exercise. There is tolerance and withdrawal, for example longer and longer distances in running to get the same feeling, and mood disorder symptoms present when one has to stop temporarily (i.e., injury, taper, rest). Tension, restless, irritable, depressed, relationship problems, and guilt may be present when someone who is negatively addicted to exercise can’t exercise. These athletes are usually aware that they have a compulsion to workout.

Staleness- “I’m tired, I can’t seem to get the job done in the last few games/races.”
Stale means having a hard time training in the usual way, performance is suffering. It usually results from overtraining, coincides with a reduction in performance for 2 weeks or more, and fails to improve even after short term breaks or reduced intensity training. The main behavioral sign of staleness is impaired performance. The main psychological symptoms include disturbance in mood (angry, irritable, flat, lethargic) and increase in perceptual effort during exercise. Practice and fitness seem harder than they used to be. Symptoms of depression may be present.

Signs and Symptoms of Staleness:
Poor performance, apathy, lethargy, sleep disturbance, weight loss, elevated resting heart rate/blood pressure, muscle pain or soreness, mood changes, GI disturbances, slow recovery from exertion, loss appetite, overuse injuries, immune system deficiency/getting colds more frequently, loss of concentration

Burnout- “Don’t want to do it, don’t like it, and leave me alone.”
Physical, emotional, and social withdrawal from a formerly enjoyable activity signify burnout is on the scene. It’s characterized by exhaustion, reduced sense of accomplishment, and devaluing the sport of choice. Chronic stress due to an imbalance in what is expected of the athlete and their real or perceived capability is related to burnout as well as changes in motivational orientations. People experience a loss of energy, loss of interest in things, low job productivity, feeling like a failure, depression, emotional numbness. They tend to stop caring about the sport and what is important to them within it.

There appear to be 2 strains of burnout: 1) social psychological- athlete perfectionism or situational pressures/other pressure are the big factors. Stress results from expectations to win in an effort to please others and feel worthy; 2) physically driven- just can’t meet the demands of physical training, leading to physical and psychological stress, and then burnout.

Signs and symptoms of Burnout:
Low motivation/energy, concentration problems, loss of desire to play/practice/train, lack of caring, sleep disturbance, physical and mental exhaustion, lowered self-esteem, negative affect, mood changes, substance abuse/more drinking than usual, changes in values/beliefs, emotional isolation/social withdrawal, increased anxiety, more highs and lows than usual

Case Study- Darla S.

Double axel, camel spins, pairs lifts, tango dance routines. I was a competitive artistic rollerskater from the time I was 7 yrs. old until I retired at the ripe old age of 16. My practice schedule was daily, right after school until 7 p.m. Weekends were filled with practice- midnight to noon sessions on both Saturday and Sunday, sometimes a little shorter, sometimes with afternoon practices added. With such a high volume of intense training, I can speak from experience about how negative overtraining leads to burnout. I remember feeling it at the age of 8.

In my skating days, I spent a lot of time in burnout mode. More breaks from burnout may have helped me be a better skater and maybe I wouldn’t have hung up my skates in the way I did, totally cut off. Aside from the effects on my sport performance, my understanding of relationships was also impacted by the experience of unattended burnout. I share this to show an example of how sports, coaches, and burnout impact youth development and athletes into adulthood, beyond sport performance. So, yes, the effect of burnout on sport performance is clear and important to monitor, but it can have some other far reaching effects.

My youth was almost entirely spent practicing a sport for which I really had little love. I remember many discussions about “quitting” for various reasons along the way- financial, coaching issues, etc. The toll that the years of intensive training took on me was physical and emotional as I consistently got the message, “Keep going, no matter what.” The power of this pattern of thinking in my sport experience groomed my discipline and perseverance. But it also led me to engage in relationships about practicing and working hard, whether there was true love there or not, whether it was good for me or not. I have been in relationships where I felt like (gasp) a “quitter” if I wanted to end the relationship, rather than see that it’s ok to retire and even quit something that’s not good for me. The “never quit” aspect of skating in formative years translated to my frame around relationships- suffer and work hard no matter what, keep going. I believe this stemmed not only from high volume, negative overload training, but from the relationship that I was in with my coach, full of pressure to continue with skating and with him as my coach, despite the suffering.

Burnout in sport clearly grows within the context of relationships, whether it’s a relationship with coach, parent, the self. When the focus is overly placed on externals (winning, performance, training), at the expense of internals (satisfaction, enjoyment, competence, choice)- these can exacerbate the drain on the athlete’s energy and strain the relationship. Intimate partners, like athletes and their sport, function well when they are together out of choice, rather than feel they are trapped and have to remain together. There needs to be a dialogue among all parties occurring, asking, “What do we need to do to best support this particular athlete, at this particular time?” that includes the athlete and the potential to choose to exit or change the relationship with the sport in terms of its intensity.

Being able to assert when I want to work hard, when I need to rest, when I want to stop altogether is a valuable lesson that I learned after years of experience of pushing through burnout. By giving youth more control over their experience, they can notice and appreciate their limits, while still pushing them for better performance. This translates into multiple life lessons, one of which is learning to pay attention to individual needs and asserting those as important, rather than perhaps, keep going at all costs, including personal well being. “No pain, no gain” is distorted thinking.

The Practice of Breaking Burnout

Burnout occurs over time and it is something that can be reversed. Here are some suggestions for how to address it.

Get some help, “coaching”
It can be difficult to figure out if burnout exists because of your sport or other things in your life, past or present. Depression and/or anxiety may pre-date the burnout or they may be a symptom of it. Talking with a professional who can help sort out the variables involved can potentially help you to shift your experience of staleness/burnout into one of enjoyment and satisfaction again. Support, strategy, and mental skills work may be extremely helpful. A neutral party can help sort out struggles such as coach and parent pressure and expectations. Also, the concepts of positive and negative addiction to exercise can be addressed, as well as a full assessment of the variables that may be contributing to the current concern.

Practice “choice,” remember “more than an athlete”
Some suggest that young athletes feel powerless with parents and coaches having so much control over decisions about their lives. There is not enough time with peers outside of sport, injuries or lack of success interfere with quality of life, identity gets wrapped up solely in sport- all of these things may lead to burnout. The suggestion here is to give young athletes more decision making, time outside of sport, and remind them of all the things they are and all the qualities they have aside from athlete related ones.

Practice “support”
Another framework for understanding burnout is that athletes who are prone to burnout feel trapped by the sport (entrapment theory). They lose motivation but continue to participate because they think have to, even if there is some piece of “I want to” as well. Reasons some athletes may feel this way: identity, lack attractive alternatives to sport, believe invested too much time or energy to stop. Suggestions include keep things focused on fun, support the athlete but do not pressure, and make sure athletes have decision making regarding practice and competition.

Practice “choice” and “helpful relationships”
Self determination theory suggests that if autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs are satisfied, athletes will less likely be burned out. So again, decision making should be in the hands of the athlete, coaches/parents/trainers should emphasize what they do well and engage in competence reinforcing behavior, not outcome based reinforcement- praise for what they are doing in the process, not praise for the win. Of utmost importance, athletes need to feel they have supportive relationships that are not tied to how well they perform, and feel loved and accepted even if they don’t perform well.

Additional practices to break burnout:
Communicate, express feelings with coaches/parents/significant other, relationship management

Set short and long term goals for practice and competition

Take breaks, vacations from sport

Self regulation skills: relaxation, imagery, self-talk, realistic goals, thought replacement, helpful vs. unhelpful thoughts

Manage post-competition emotions: be in a supportive atmosphere, be with the team, group activity, stay away from demanding peers/parents, avoid gloating/depressing over a loss, start preparing for next opponent/event at next practice

Eat more carbs, hydrate

Lower intensity of training, stretch

No physical activity, sleep

Massage, bodywork


Conclusion

Athletes may suffer temporarily in the midst of pushing limits and driving to have best performances, engaging in overtraining that leads to improvement. But, too much suffering, crossing the line to the land of negative overtraining, is not helpful to performance and interferes with one’s quality of life. In our search for satisfaction, we find sport, sometimes we need to navigate away from it.

As coaches and parents, we need to be wary of burnout symptoms displayed by youth. As trainers, we can educate clients about positive and negative overtraining. We need to take care of ourselves as athletes, and take better care of those we train or coach because the effects of burnout go beyond sport. We can effectively push, sometimes when we do less of it. Within scientific training recommendations, only the individual can know how much is the right amount of training, intensity, and rest, but they have to be given the option to pay attention to their own bodies and assert decisions on their own behalf. This is so they can enjoy their sport, but it is also for the sake of their relationships with their own selves and the people they want to love.


References:
Weinberg, R. & Gould, D. (2011). Foundations of Sport and Exercise Psychology, (5th Ed.). Human Kinetics: Champaign, IL.