Prevent Burnout with 1 Tip
Feeling burnt out?
After months of uncertainty around sport seasons, it has probably been hard to find the motivation to train for your sport. You might be feeling down, anxious, irritable, or just not feeling like yourself anymore. It’s natural to feel these things during this time and you’re probably not alone in feeling them. You have spent years training for sports and now you might be questioning what’s the point of it all. If you were an athlete in a winter or spring sport and had your season cancelled, that probably took a huge emotional toll on you.
If you relate to that above paragraph (or if you could apply it to your work life), then you are probably starting to experience burnout. Athlete Burnout is defined by Raedeke, Lunney, and Venables (2002) as “a withdrawal from [sport] noted by a reduced sense of accomplishment, devaluation/resentment of sport, and physical/psychological exhaustion.” Essentially, you don’t feel like you’re accomplishing anything through your sport, you stop valuing your sport and don’t know why you participate, and you’re just physically or emotionally drained. The one thing that might not apply to you is being physically exhausted since you probably aren’t practicing or playing every day anymore. However, you might have stopped valuing your sport as much as you did in-season or you feel as if you can’t accomplish things right now through your sport.
The only proven “cure” for burnout is just to rest, but that is only going to help with the physical and emotional burnout. However, there are ways to help prevent or reduce feelings of burnout. I’m going to share one of my favorite tips with you on how you can start ramping up your motivation in sport, work, and even normal day-to-day activities, as well as, finding accomplishments to celebrate every day!
Set Goals
If you’re like most people, you have probably noticed working out or getting your day started is a whole lot easier when you’re training for a specific purpose. The hard days in the gym are for a purpose to make you better but going for a 5-mile run because the Nike Run Club app tells you to, is a lot harder. The difference is your motivation level. When you put a purpose behind your training, your motivation level increases, and you can get small bursts of accomplishment consistently. The best way to put purpose in your day to day activities is to set S.M.A.R.T. Goals.
S.M.A.R.T. stands for Specific, Measurable, Action-Oriented, Realistic, Time-Based. You want your goals to be as Specific as possible. This is the What part of your goal. The more specific you make this the easier it will be for you to know exactly what you are striving towards. Your goals also need to be Measurable. This needs to be a concrete way to know you are making progress and hitting your goals. Action-Oriented is how you are going to achieve the goal. What actions are you going to be taking daily to make sure you are working towards that end goal? Arguably the most important letter for these goals is R. If your goal isn’t Realistic, you’re not going to be able to hit it and you will get discouraged from your lack of progress. However, realistic should not be easy. You want to challenge yourself with these goals to help you grow as much as possible. Finally, we have Time-Based. You need to set a deadline and check-in points (long-term goals) for your goals. Without a hard deadline, procrastination will set in and you might take a lot longer to accomplish your goals than you originally intended.
An example of a S.M.A.R.T. Goal: “I will improve my free throw % from 76% to 83% for next season by making 20 free throws in a row every day.” This is specific (increase FT% by X%), measurable (83%), action-oriented (20 FTs/day), realistic (20 in a row isn’t unreasonable), and time-based (by the end of next season).
When setting up your goals, I would recommend setting up 4 different levels of goals. The first is small goals for every weekday. Second, a medium goal for something you want to accomplish over the course of 1 or 2 weeks. Third, set up a monthly goal with weekly check-ins to see how you are progressing. Those check-ins will help stop you from procrastinating. Fourth, I would set up a long-term goal. This one can be of any length that you want, but I would recommend between 3-12 months with monthly check-ins on your goal. With these 4 tiers of goals, you will constantly be working towards something that you put value you in and can find purpose in everything that you do and hopefully avoid burning out in sport or anything else you pursue.
