Can You Overcome Burnout as a Soccer Player?

One of the scariest things about burnout is that it feels like there’s no going back. If you push yourself to the point that your sport isn’t fun anymore, your athletic career appears to be over. How can you fall in love with the game again when it’s causing so much stress?

The truth is, it’s entirely feasible to recover from burnout and return to your usual self. Professional athletes unknowingly burn themselves out all the time. it happens. It’s real. It happens to pros as much as it happens to youth athletes, if not more.

So how do they push through it? They re-center and re-prioritize their mental health. And, yes, it’s possible that they return with even more focus and passion than before.

Here’s how to overcome burnout as a soccer player: 

Understand Where Burnout Comes From

Burnout happens when athletes take on so much physical and mental stress that it sucks the joy out of their sport. Activities that used to make them excited - like going to practice or watching their favorite club on TV - now seem to have the opposite effect.

At first, the logical solution seems to be to simply develop a healthier training regimen. Once you get more sleep and have more energy, your temperament will naturally improve, and all the negativity you feel towards your sport will gradually fade away, right?  

While these changes are undeniably helpful, you can’t tell someone to modify their training when they have no desire to train altogether. That’s what burnout does: it makes training seem pointless, because you’re not getting any fulfillment from it.

The key to overcoming burnout is finding that purpose. In order for an athlete to return to a regular training regimen, they need a clear reason for doing so.  

Identify What You Truly Love About Soccer

As former pros, we learned very early on that passion is essential for a long career. A soccer player is significantly more likely to be successful when they enter every game or training with a smile on their face. If you don’t love what you’re doing - or you don’t know why you’re playing this sport in the first place - the physical demands of high-level sports will eventually cause you to burn out.

This is where recovery from burnout begins. You have to look deep within yourself and identify what it is about your sport that you truly love.

Do you love the camaraderie with your teammates? Do you love the intensity of the competition with your opponents? Perhaps the never-ending pursuit of perfection and getting better? Maybe you love the mysterious nature of soccer, or the fact that you have no idea how each game will unfold.  

Think about what made you excited to wake up for practice, or the specific moments of a game or a practice session you enjoyed most. It’s easy to lose track of what you love about soccer when your mind is so fixated on training and the routine aspect of high-level sports.

Find This Element in Every Practice or Game 

Once you’ve identified exactly what you love about your sport, you can find this element in every game or training session. For example, you might not love running, but you love being with your teammates, and training is something you and your teammates do together. Likewise, you might not love always being tired at the end of the day, but you love the thrill of victory. During a tough training session, you can remember that you’d pay any price to get to the next level.

Identifying what you love about your sport gives you a reason to start training again. It reminds you that soccer is truly important to you, and that this sport was your choice, not someone else’s When training gets more intense and you naturally ask yourself, “What’s the point of all this?”, you’ll have an immediate answer, and it will fuel you to push yourself even harder.  

The Power of Knowing Your “Why”

At Beyond Goals Mentoring, we help young athletes overcome burnout by identifying what we call their “why.” This is what fuels countless professional athletes to tolerate the aspects of their sport they don’t like. They focus on what they love, and remind themselves that they wouldn’t want to spend their time doing anything else.

So, if your athlete is having trouble staying motivated or seems to be on the verge of burnout, let’s set up a mentoring session today.