How to prevent fitness burn-out in 4 steps

How many times have you started a fitness undertaking with the best intentions and given up within a day, week, or month? How many 6 weeks programmes have you committed to only to find yourself promptly burnt out? How many times have you promised yourself that next time it will be different?

Fitness journeys are complicated. If it was easy, we’d all be totally fit and healthy all the time, and I’d be out of a job. Making adjustments to your lifestyle requires hard work, determination, and discipline.

And without the correct guidance and knowledge of how to navigate a new fitness routine, changes can be short-lived and even harmful, leading to one of the biggest buzzkills: burnout.

I’ve spent many years making many mistakes and honing in on the best ways to live a happy and healthy lifestyle. So listen up, because I’m here to help you finally crack the code and stick to your fitness goals by sharing these research based steps for beating burnout.

1. Get Enough Sleep and Rest

Skimping on sleep is a guaranteed fast track to burnout. When we exercise, especially when we are building strength, we create tiny micro-tears in our muscles. These micro tears need to recover and grow to gain the benefits of the workout. This process happens when you rest and sleep. If you don’t get enough sleep, you are undermining all the hard work you have put into your workout. You are sabotaging yourself.

We know we’re supposed to have 8 hours of sleep every night. But I appreciate this can be unrealistic for a lot of people. So I am going to suggest you aim to get 8 hours of sleep, 4 nights a week. Just go to bed earlier on the nights that you can. If you’re getting up at 5 am to train, aim to be in bed by 9 pm. The thing is, this isn’t going to happen by accident. If you know it takes you 20 minutes to do your nighttime routine, turning the TV off at 8.59 pm isn’t going to have you asleep by 9 pm.

If you find it incredibly difficult to stick to a bedtime I find it helps to plan ahead, and even visualise it. Visualisation is a powerful tool that taps into our subconscious to help us move and act more effectively. Earlier in the day, visualise getting into bed and closing your eyes at 1 minute before your bedtime. Picture what the clock on your wall, or phone, looks like when you see it for the last time that day. The more you do this, the easier it gets.

2. Practice moderation and balance - and being disciplined enough to maintain it!

By now, we have enough evidence to support the knowledge that if we restrict ourselves too harshly, we eventually binge, overindulge, and burn out. This restrict-binge cycle could take place over the course of a day, a week, or 6 weeks. Whatever the time frame, this cycle is counterproductive, disheartening, and completely avoidable!*

Too often I hear ‘Oh, it’s all or nothing! I can’t have just one drink/chocolate bar/ takeaway/night off or my whole routine will go out the window’. This approach sets you up for failure from the offset! The smart, and often more challenging, way to go is to enjoy our indulgences (i.e. alcohol, late nights, takeaway) in moderation.

What does moderation look like? It will be different for everybody but here is an example: as part of your fitness journey you have committed to a curfew of 9 pm (to support your rest goals) and decided to give up alcohol for 6 weeks. But, you get invited out for dinner (and why wouldn't you, you’re a fantastic dinner guest!). You adapt the plan and allow yourself 2 or 3 glasses of wine and a more sociable bedtime. Now you can enjoy yourself safe in the knowledge that this will not derail your entire fitness journey. If you had restricted too harshly by skipping this dinner, you would be more likely to binge the next you're met with a similar set of circumstances. Moderation is key.

If you're reading this and thinking, "there's just no way I could do that, moderation doesn't work for me…" You are exactly the person this is for! Be brave, be strong, and take this opportunity to learn some healthy discipline. With practice, being disciplined will get easier and you will get more comfortable with enjoying things in moderation. It is a learning process.

*Here I would like to acknowledge that if you are currently suffering from a binge-eating disorder or addiction, seeking professional advice from a licensed therapist is encouraged. As somebody who has suffered from both of these, I can share lived experiences. However, I acknowledge that I am not qualified to offer medical advice on these matters.

3. Knowing when you need to rest or to rally.

Sometimes, especially when taking on a new challenge, it’s hard to know whether you need to take a day off and get some quality rest, or ‘suck it up’ and be resilient. The problem is… the cues for ‘fatigue’ and ‘lack of motivation’ are pretty similar.

• Feeling lethargic/sleepy

• Not feeling enthusiastic about your workout

• Feeling emotionally out of sorts

Because these cues are so similar, we can often get confused by what our body is trying to tell us.

It’s super important to figure out whether you need rest or resilience because if you push through fatigue when you need rest you’re likely to burn out. And if you rest, when what you actually need is resilience, you're not getting as much out of yourself as you could be.

I find one of the best ways to make this distinction is to ask yourself, "does this make me feel big and bold?"

Here’s an example: I have a workout booked in the morning at 6 am, I’m feeling really ‘off’ and can’t decide if I should go. I’m going to close my eyes and visualise resetting my alarm for later and getting an extra hour of sleep. Does that make me feel big and bold? Yes? You need rest! No? You need to rally!

A note on intuition:

Our intuition is so valuable when embarking on a health and fitness journey. As a culture, we tend to look to external sources to identify how we’re feeling. What does my smart watch sleep tracker tell me? How many workouts have I done this week compared to last week? I feel hungry but what does my food tracker say? All of these external sources of information can damage our relationship with our intuition and internal cues. At the heart of it, you and your intuition are the only thing that can really tell you what you need. So listen out for it. It might be a little shy and quiet at first but give it space to make itself known.

4. Reflective Practice

Research has shown that those that use reflective practice tend to better embed what they have learned in a session, and consequently improve performance. Additionally, with reflective practice, you are more likely to connect with what you are doing, stay engaged, and feel inspired to keep going.

So enough mindlessly following programmes and hoping for the best. As a preventative measure for burnout, I encourage you to take a moment to reflect on your workouts and your fitness journey as you go.

One really valuable and practical tip I've picked up over years of playing sport competitively, that I have since applied to my fitness, is to always finish a session with the question ‘What did I do in this session that I thought went well? What do I want to improve on next time?’. Sometimes I start a session with an intention too, like "In today's workout, I intend to slow myself down and be present because last time I zoned out".

Maybe you’re someone who likes to keep a journal. Maybe you make a note on your phone. Even just the practice of doing this mentally each day is going to help you prevent burnout. So quit sleeping on reflective practice and include this in your fitness journey.

And there you have it. A rundown of how not to get run down. See what I’ve done there? Quality writing.

Seriously though, these steps have been invaluable for me in unlocking my potential and building a lasting, healthy relationship with fitness. Start applying these research based strategies to beat burnout and I'm confident you'll see how they help you find your flow. Remember it's a learning process. All fitness journeys have their ups and downs. But with this knowledge hopefully you'll be living it up, rather than feeling run-down.