Burnout is no joke; you begin to see a dip in performance, increased anxiety around training, and just generally feel like you don’t want to “grind” anymore. Some people would say that you’re not burnt out, but rather you're just under-recovered… Personally, I think that’s bullshit.

As a Masters athlete, you’re undoubtedly managing more stress in your life than just training, and your “stress bucket” can quickly become overrun with the stress of training, competition, family, career, and all your other responsibilities as a functioning adult. 

The best way to avoid burnout is a proactive one. Letting your ego get in the way and not acknowledging the impact of what’s happening in your life is one of the quickest ways to enter burnout. 

If you feel like you’re on the brink of, or are coming out of, burnout and you want a better way to handle it moving forward, then keep reading. The steps I’m about to cover seem simple in practice, but can feel overwhelming depending on what you have going on in your life. 

I promise you, if you can work through the 3 steps outlined below, you’ll move past burnout and will get back to training faster without having lost much, if any, progress. 

1. Acknowledge the stress

2. Communicate

3. Adjust 

Acknowledge the Stress

Stress is an interesting player in this concept. We need to stress ourselves to continue to improve, especially in training. Burnout happens when stress is too high, lasts too long, or goes unmanaged. 

If you’re feeling the stress in life start to culminate start looking at these areas of your life:

• Quality of your food: Lower quality puts higher demands on your body to digest and/or repair. 

• Financial Stress: Where can you cut back to loosen some funds?

• Emotional Stress: Is there something happening in your life you need to address?

• Physical Stress: Are you pushing too hard or trying to do too much?

• Recovery: Do you have a system or strategy in place to optimize recovery?

Acknowledging that these are in fact a stress in your life is step 1. It’s step 1 because without acknowledging it, you can’t shift the plan. 

Now that you’ve acknowledged it, it’s time to talk about it. Which brings me to step 2, communicate.

Communicate

If you’re reading this, you’re undoubtedly an athlete, so I’m going to keep this relevant to training. The balancing act of stress comes down to communication. Having open communication with your coach is the only way to balance the stress in your life with your training program. If you reach burnout, it’s already too late. The time for conversation has already passed and now you’re forced to be reactive in taking a training deload or even complete rest slowing your progress. So bring it up sooner than later if you begin to feel the effects of stress. 

The sooner you make your coach aware of what’s happening in your life, the sooner they can adjust your plan. When there is stress other than training stress in your life, it’s easy for your coach to adjust intensity and volume to keep you progressing. Maybe you back off the high intensity training for a week or two while you handle some family responsibilities that require traveling, a less than optimal diet, and just generally higher emotional stress, all things that can “overflow your stress bucket”.

By not trying to maintain the intensity of your current training cycle with the stress of life, you’ll avoid burnout, and will come back to training ready to jump back in because you didn’t put yourself in a deficit. 

Adjust

You’ve tackled the bulk of the work in steps 1 and 2. Step 3 is where you look beyond training and get proactive about what you just acknowledged. 

For example, if your diet is out of whack, review the last few weeks and start making micro adjustments or talk to a nutrition professional to “deload” the demand that your nutrition is having on your system. 

Or maybe, you’re having an argument with your significant other, or challenges at work, you need to get the venom out of your system. Grab a notebook and just write. Get it all out. You don’t have to re-read it, it doesn’t have to make sense; the only thing that matters is you’re getting it out from inside of you. After that, you can choose to address it further or leave it at that. I promise, no matter which you choose, you’ll feel better. 

The major takeaway from Adjust is that you’re being proactive in adjusting your current state. You’re managing your stress, effectively moving from high stress to low(er) stress.

When your stress is managed and your program is stressing you properly, you can adapt, i.e. make progress, get stronger, and can push harder. 

So, to recap, if you want to avoid burnout:

• Don’t let your ego get in the way, and acknowledge the new stress in your life. 

• Communicate the change with your coach. That way, they can adjust the program accounting for the new stress. 

• Take personal responsibility and make the macro and micro changes in your life to shift your state from high to low(er) stress. 

See you on the podium,

Coach Ryan Bucciantini