WE live in a society and world today that pushes the idea that more is better…More likes, more shares, more clothes, more shoes, more friends, more choices… just more! And this concept has not been isolated only to the realms of consumerism and social media but indeed has found itself worming into the structures of our work environments, home environments and even our sporting environments.
It can sometimes feel like a 'more-off,' to see who in the group is doing the most while simultaneously trying to balance it all, and is more often than not, drowning in it. We even go insofar as to compete for who has more fatigue and stress. How many times have you been privy to a conversation where someone says, 'no one could be more tired than me right now,' and the person proceeds to rattle off all the things they're trying to balance between projects at work, chores and family responsibilities and the ability to still find time for a social life. We even strive for more when it comes to socialising and partying…he or she who attends the most fetes wins despite the fact that it's physically exhausting, financially draining and even detrimental to our liver function. If you haven't sensed the theme yet there's well…more!
Looking specifically at our sporting environments we find that the theme of 'doing more,' is ingrained in our athletes from a very young age. Parents and coaches alike, hopeful of future athlete and team success, encourage young athletes to specialise earlier and earlier in a particular sport and commit to year-round training. This might include heavy training loads and amounting pressures to do more and achieve more to gain that competitive advantage over their opponents. Little consideration, however, is often given to the costs of operating at such a speed and the rates of junior elite athlete burnout and sports drop-out are continually rising.
So, let's take a look at the science…Athlete burnout is described as 'a response to chronic stress of continued demands in a sport or activity without the opportunity for physical and mental rest and recovery. Burnout is a syndrome of continual training and sport attention stress, resulting in staleness, overtraining and eventually burnout,' (Stizler, 2016). It should be noted that stress does not refer solely to on-field work but can also be caused by off-field factors such as quality of physical rest, injury, nutrition, regular daily distances travelled, academic demands, social and family demands, work demands etc. Additionally, this is not 'stress,' as we refer to it colloquially but indeed is the response of the body to demand and whether the athlete categorises that demand as a threat or challenge based on the physical and mental resources he/she perceives to have. I would have discussed stress in a previous article When perception Trumps Reality.
Going a little further along, there are three dimensions to athlete burnout: Physical and Emotional Exhaustion, Reduced Performance Accomplishments and Sport Devaluation. Moen, Myhre, Klöckner, Gausen
