Dealing with Burnout: Recognizing the Signs and Helping Your Athlete

High-level athletes are hard workers by nature. They consistently push through pain and exhaustion to perfect their skills and physical abilities, often training multiple times per day while balancing school work and social lives.

When your athlete is so used to feeling tired and sore, it can be difficult to tell when they’re overworked and on the verge of burnout.

To help you determine if your athlete needs a break to recharge their mind and body, here are a few tell-tale signs of burnout in young athletes:

Less Interest in Training and Hobbies May Be a Sign of Burnout

The most obvious sign of burnout is a change in your athlete’s attitude and personality, and not for the better. Put simply, they don’t seem like themselves. The things that usually bring them joy don’t have the same effect. Maybe they’re not as excited about training, or they seem to have less interest in watching soccer on TV. Maybe they’re not looking forward to seeing their friends, or don’t seem to care about that new movie they were scouring YouTube for clips of a few months ago.

As a parent, you know your child’s interests and passions. When they no longer seem excited about these things, it may because they’re so overworked that they don’t even have the energy or the motivation to enjoy them.

General Irritability May Be a Sign of Burnout

Another classic sign of burnout is general irritability. When you perform the same training routines over and over again for months on end, it’s easy to lose track of why you’re performing these routines in the first place. Instead of finishing training sessions feeling satisfied and optimistic, you feel like you just performed a pointless task and wasted your time.

When you don’t know why you’re training this hard, you feel like you’re trapped in a vicious cycle against your will. You’d be pretty irritable too if you felt like you had no control over your life.

Seeming Tired and Lethargic May Be a Sign of Burnout

You know your athlete is overworked when they seem tired and lethargic. A healthy training routine should leave your athlete feeling focused, energetic, and mentally composed. Yes, it’s normal to feel exhausted after grueling practice, but not to the point where it’s affecting your athlete’s ability to get up for school in the morning and stay awake during class. If anything, your athlete should have an easier time with these things because they’re supposed to have more energy. When the opposite scenario is unfolding, your athlete’s body clearly needs a break.

What You Can Do as a Parent of a Athlete That is Burnt Out

High-level athletes are so accustomed to training hard that they don’t even know when they’ve burnt themselves out. And the signs of being burnt out also mirror signs of being a teenager, so it can be hard to tell. Our recommendation for parents: if you recognize these signs, take a moment to sit down and speak with your kid. Ask them how they’re doing, how they’re feeling. It might be something that they just need to get off their chest, or it might be more. Share what you’re seeing and ask them if they feel that way.

Depending on what their answer is, you can work together to find the right answer. Maybe it is scheduling some down time, helping them with time management to juggle all of their responsibilities, or maybe seeing a therapist would help. You want to find a way to give their bodies and minds enough time to recharge to their normal states.

At Beyond Goals Mentoring, we’ve seen the impact excessive training and pressure can have on an athlete’s passion for soccer firsthand. That’s why we’re dedicated to helping athletes develop healthy training routines without losing track of their “why,” or what it is about their sport they truly love. Hard work is perfectly fine as long as you’re having fun, since that’s the foundation of a long and fulfilling career in any field.

So, if your athlete appears to be exhibiting signs of burnout, let’s set up a mentoring session and start rebuilding their relationship with their sport.