Burnout in athletes: when the love of sport fades

“I used to wake up before my alarm because I couldn’t wait for morning training. Now I sit in the car outside the hall and can’t open the door.”

Anyone who takes their sport seriously could say this — a young volleyball player, a long-distance runner, a swimmer who has lived to the rhythm of two sessions a day since the age of nine. On the outside, nothing in particular has happened. No injury, no big defeat, the results may even be decent. Only something that always went without saying has disappeared: the joy that made all of it worthwhile in the first place.

In sport, we call this burnout. And although the word sounds as if it were simply about too much training, it is more complicated than that — and more human. In this post I will explain what researchers mean by burnout in athletes, how it differs from overtraining, what role perfectionism plays and what happens in relationships along the way. I am writing as a therapist in training in marriage and family therapy, not as a sport psychologist: what interests me is the person who trains, their distress and the people around them — not technique or results.

The three sides of burnout in sport

In the late 1990s, the American researcher Thomas Raedeke proposed a description that has stuck in sport science to this day. In his view, athlete burnout is not one single thing but three changes happening at once:

• Physical and emotional exhaustion. Tiredness that even a free weekend does not fix. It is not just about the muscles, but the sense that the tank is empty even when it ought to be full.
• A reduced sense of accomplishment. As if you are not making progress, however much you put in. Even a good result brings no satisfaction, because it feels like luck or not enough.
• Sport devaluation. The sport that was once the centre of your life stops mattering. Cynicism creeps in: towards competitions, towards the coach, towards everything connected with it.

Raedeke modelled this description on workplace burnout as described by Christina Maslach — exhaustion, cynicism and a sense of ineffectiveness. The difference lies in the third side: an athlete does not become cynical towards the people they help, but towards the activity they have given the most to. That is exactly why the loss is often so painful. You do not just lose motivation; you lose something you loved. If you are interested in how burnout shows itself outside sport, I wrote about it in Burnout is not laziness: signs your nervous system is asking for a break, and you will find a short explanation of the term in the knowledge base under burnout.

How common is it? In 2007, the Swedish researcher Henrik Gustafsson and his colleagues studied young competitive athletes and found that between one and nine per cent of them showed marked signs of burnout — depending on how strictly the threshold was set. The figure seems small until you remember that these are young people who chose their sport themselves and love it. And until you remember that for everyone who crosses the line, there are several more just below it.

Tired is not the same as burnt out

In sport, burnout is easily confused with overtraining. Both begin in a similar way: performance drops, the body feels heavy, sleep gets worse, mood swings. But they differ in origin and in how they unfold.

Overtraining is primarily a physical state. In a joint consensus statement in 2013, the European College of Sport Science and the American College of Sports Medicine described it as the result of an imbalance between load and recovery — too much training, competition and other strain, too little rest. In a serious overtraining syndrome, the body takes weeks or months to recover, and the diagnosis is a matter for a doctor, who has to rule out other causes, from infections to iron deficiency and thyroid problems.

Burnout reaches further. It can start with excessive load, but often it has nothing to do with the amount of training. Researchers who study it point to factors such as feeling that you have no say in decisions about your own sport, the pressure of expectations, a one-sided identity and relationships in which love is quietly tied to results. Someone who is overtrained is usually angry because things are not going well — the sport still matters to them. Someone who is burnt out has fewer and fewer reasons to be angry. They simply stop caring.

In practice, the two often intertwine. That is why the first step is the same for both: a medical check-up. Only once physical causes have been ruled out or treated does it make sense to look elsewhere.

Perfectionism: when the goal is always one step further

If I had to choose one personality trait that appears most often in research on athlete burnout, it would be perfectionism. But not just any kind.

In a 2016 meta-analysis, Andrew Hill and Thomas Curran brought together studies on perfectionism and burnout and showed that it matters to distinguish two sides. The first is perfectionistic strivings — high personal standards, the wish to do something excellently. On its own, this side was not clearly linked to burnout. The second is perfectionistic concerns — fear of mistakes, the sense that others expect perfection, constant self-criticism and doubt about whether it was ever enough. It was this side that was clearly linked to burnout.

The difference is huge. An athlete with high standards can say: “It didn’t work today, tomorrow I’ll try something different.” An athlete driven by fear says: “It didn’t work today because I’m not good enough.” The first uses the mistake; the second internalises it. The first trains towards a goal; the second runs away from shame. And running away exhausts you far faster than walking towards something.

I wrote about how this fear spreads beyond sport in Perfectionism and overthinking: two sides of the same fear, and about the voice that constantly judges in The inner critic: where the voice that constantly judges you comes from. In athletes, this voice often has a very concrete origin. Once it was external: a coach who pointed only to the mistakes after a match, a parent who analysed every point in the car on the way home. Over time, you no longer need it from the outside — you carry it with you. You will find a short explanation of the term in the knowledge base under perfectionism.

Trapped in sport: staying even though you have already left

Raedeke linked burnout to a question that seems simple at first glance: why does someone stay in sport? Some stay because they want to — because they enjoy it, because the sport fulfils them. Others stay because they feel they have to. Because they have invested too many years to give up now. Because their parents pay for everything. Because they are part of a team that counts on them. Because they don’t know who they would be without it.

Raedeke found that those most vulnerable to burnout are precisely the ones who feel trapped in their sport: they have invested a great deal, but the sport no longer brings them joy, and at the same time they see no way out. As early as 1992, the sociologist Jay Coakley pointed to the other side of the same phenomenon. In his view, young athletes do not burn out because they are weak, but because they are often caught in a system in which they have no control over their own lives, and their identity narrows to a single role. When you have been “a swimmer” since the age of ten, it is hard to know who you are once you no longer want to swim.

This is where burnout touches something deeper than tiredness: identity. If sport is the only thing through which a person experiences themselves as worthwhile, then admitting that it no longer brings joy does not just mean changing a timetable. It means shaking the ground beneath your feet. That is why many athletes would rather persist in emptiness than allow themselves to ask whether they still want this at all. I will write more about what happens when a career really does end in When the career ends: who you are when you are no longer an athlete.

Burnout is not one person’s private matter

As a family therapist in training, I also look at burnout through relationships. An athlete never trains alone, even when they compete individually. Around them are a coach, parents, a partner, teammates, sometimes sponsors and the media. Each of them expects something, invests something and hopes for something.

In relational family therapy, in which I am training, we are interested in the place sport holds in the system a person carries with them. Sometimes sport is what holds the family together: weekends are competitions, dinner conversations are about results, parents’ pride is tied to the child’s success. Sometimes sport is the child’s way of being seen — the only place where a parent really notices them. Sometimes sport is a path the parent wanted for themselves but could not walk.

In such cases, burnout is not just a personal crisis. It is a signal that the burden a person carries is bigger than they are. And when an athlete says “I can’t anymore”, they are often not talking only about training. They are also saying that they can no longer carry expectations that nobody ever spoke out loud. That is why in therapy it matters that we look not only at them, but also at who else is part of their sport and what each of those people needs.

What it sounds like up close

This is what a conversation in one of the first sessions might sound like (composed, not a real person):

“My coach says it’s a phase and I have to grit my teeth.”
“What do you say?”
“That I don’t know any more why I’m doing this. But I can’t say that. My dad drove halfway across Slovenia every day because of my training.”
“It sounds as if admitting that you no longer enjoy it would take something away from someone.”
“Yes. As if I were telling him it was all for nothing.”

In this short exchange there is no talk of training hours or results. It is about a debt a person feels towards someone who loves them. A debt like this often keeps people in sport longer than is good for them. And until someone puts it into words, it remains an invisible burden that no amount of rest can lift.

Exercise: whose sport is it?

This exercise does not measure burnout and does not replace a conversation with a professional. But it helps to separate your own voice from the voices you have internalised. Take fifteen minutes and a sheet of paper.

1. Finish the sentence three times. “I train because …” Write down the first three answers that come to mind, without correcting them.
2. Next to each one, note whose voice it is. Is it your wish? Your coach’s? Your parents’? The team’s? The voice of someone who is no longer here? There are no right answers — you are just observing.
3. Remember the last moment you enjoyed your sport. Where were you, who were you with, what did you feel in your body? If it is hard to remember, write that down too — roughly when it was.
4. Rate the three sides from 0 to 10. How exhausted you are, how much you feel you are progressing, and how much you still care about the sport. Don’t add them up — just look at where the biggest change is compared with last year.
5. Say one sentence to someone you trust. Not your coach, and not a parent if too much of the sport is theirs. Perhaps a friend, a partner, a sister. Start with “Lately I’ve been noticing that …”.

If you would like a more detailed self-check, you will find it in the knowledge base under burnout self-check. What you write down is not a diagnosis, but it is a good start to a conversation — with yourself or with someone else.

When the answer is not with me

I want to be clear: not every dip in motivation is burnout, and not every burnout is a matter for psychotherapy. A few limits I think are important:

• The body first. Tiredness that won’t go away, mood swings and poorer sleep can be signs of overtraining, iron deficiency, thyroid problems, an infection or too little energy from food. The first port of call is therefore a doctor, ideally a sports doctor for athletes.
• Technique, competition preparation and mental skills are the domain of a sport psychologist. If what troubles you most is how to focus before the start or how to deal with a mistake mid-competition, they are the right person to see. I am not a sport psychologist and I do not claim to be.
• When hopelessness, withdrawal from everyone, loss of appetite or thoughts of not wanting to live join in, it is no longer just burnout. You need to see your GP or a psychiatrist. If thoughts of death are strong, call the Klic v duševni stiski helpline on 01 520 99 00 in Slovenia (every day from 7 pm to 7 am), the Samarijan helpline on 116 123 in Slovenia (24 hours), or in an emergency 112.
• Sometimes the answer lies in the system, not in the person. If a coach humiliates, if the schedule is inhuman, if a teenager has no say in their own sport, psychotherapy will not fix the environment. It can help a person recognise it and stand up to it — or leave it.
• Perhaps the story has simply come to an end. Love for a sport does not necessarily need “fixing”. Sometimes the healthiest decision is to stop or to change level. That is not a defeat, but a choice.

What psychotherapy can offer

With an athlete’s burnout, psychotherapy does not aim at a faster return to competition. It aims at the person. In our sessions we explore together what sport means to them, whose expectations they carry, where the voice that is never satisfied comes from, and who they are when they are not training. Old relationships often surface — with parents, with the first coach, with a brother or sister who was “the talented one”.

Because I am training in marriage and family therapy, a partner or parents can sometimes be invited to a session, if it makes sense and if the person wants it. Burnout often does not unravel until something changes in the relationships around them too. For those who want to look deeper into their family story, there is also a longer session with a genogram, A Look into the Past. I also work with English-speaking clients. I will write more about when psychotherapy makes sense for an athlete alongside a coach and a sport psychologist in Psychotherapy for athletes: when a coach and a sport psychologist are not enough.

An important part of the work is also the relationship with yourself. Many athletes have learnt that being hard on yourself is a condition for success. Research on self-compassion suggests the opposite: people who can treat themselves kindly after a mistake recover more easily and try again. I write more about this in Self-compassion instead of self-criticism: what Kristin Neff’s research shows.

What to remember

• Burnout in athletes is not just tiredness. It is three changes at once: exhaustion, a reduced sense of accomplishment and sport devaluation.
• Overtraining and burnout overlap, but they are not the same. For both, the first step is a medical check-up.
• Burnout is linked above all to perfectionism driven by fear of mistakes — not to high standards as such.
• Those most vulnerable are athletes who stay in sport because they feel they have to, and those whose identity has narrowed to a single role.
• For technique and competition preparation, see a sport psychologist; for the body, a doctor; for severe distress, a psychiatrist. Psychotherapy focuses on the person and their relationships.