Are you experiencing burnout?

What Is Burnout?

Have you ever heard of someone talking about burnout? That you need to do selfcare to make sure you don't reach burnout? And then wonder how this applies to your workouts?

This month I plan to talk about all things with scheduling, burnout, preventing burnout and how to balance your life including your workouts.Burnout often happens to so many of us without even realizing it. Your schedule is non-stop between work, family, workouts, social life etc. You don't think you have anywhere to give until one day you are just done. You find yourself not willing to get up and do your workout. You literally sit on the couch all day binge you are just done. You find yourself not willing to get up and do your workout. You literally sit on the couch all day binge watching junk TV and getting nothing on your to do list done. You feel guilty about not getting anything done and swear tomorrow you will catch up. Except tomorrow comes and your motivation isn't any better. This can go on for days and easily turn into a week where you fulfill your absolute obligations but nothing else is happening. Before you know it you look around the house and it's like a tornado come through (in my house the tornadoes have names and are almost 8 and 5). You are out of clean clothes- did you do laundry this week? Oh yes it's there in the mound of clean laundry waiting to be folded.

How did this happen? This happened because your daily life schedule burned you out.

Did you know burnout can apply to your workouts too? I know I've been there. When I went all in and it became too much for me. I was trying to do 2 workouts a day - one intense and one not as intense. I wasn't taking a day off….even my days off had a workout scheduled of some type. Now if the only thing I had to do in a day was workout that might not result in a burnout. (I personally think it still would at some point but that's another discussion for another day). But I don't just have to workout, I also have to do all of the daily living activities I talked about above. There was no downtime in my life. My body was not recovering day to day from my workouts and it became too much. I went from doing 2 workouts a day to not doing any…for several days in a row. This is why when I talk with clients I explain they will not have a workout every day. There are rest days built in and I expect them to happen. You can't just go non-stop without losing your love and desire for your workouts and runs.

Now that you understand what burnout is and how it happens our goal this month is to learn how to prevent it with realistic steps and approaches. You can't just stop doing your laundry, showing up to work or eating meals. But there are systems you can put in place to help you prevent burnout from happening in your life. Make sure you watch for my next post all about schedule balance. I promise it will help you start creating a more balanced life schedule.