Sports burnout is a concept that is being talked about more and more often. That's why we decided to talk about it with those most in the know: psychologists Mgr. Jana Harvanova and Ph.D. a Mgr. Hana Pernicová, Ph.D. z Faculty of Physical Culture at Palacký University. In the interview we discuss not only sports burnout in practice, but also the issue of sports psychology in general.
First of all, I would like to briefly introduce you. Could you please tell me who you are, and how did you get into sports psychology?
J.H.A: My name is Jana Harvanová and I cannot say that sport psychology is the number one field of my work. I work at the Faculty of Physical Culture at Palacký University and I do quite a wide spectrum of counselling, which includes personal or study problems and sometimes I am also approached by athletes, especially from the field of aesthetic-coordination sports, which I am close to from my own sports career. But I also deal with dance couples, which is such a specialty because they play sports as a couple, and that brings a whole other spectrum of issues.
H.P.: My name is Hana Pernicová, I work at the Faculty of Physical Culture of Palacký University, where I am engaged in counselling for students. Since 2010 I also provide counselling for athletes, mainly individually. My background is psychology, I also studied physical education. My former sports career is in athletics, which is why I am so close to sports psychology. I also studied sport psychology as part of my doctoral studies.
Although your field is very broad, what problems do you solve most often? What do people most often struggle with when it comes to sports?
J.H.: Although this is a very broad question, I will try to answer it in a way that keeps the burnout stemming from sports in my field of vision. I come across children in my care, most often at the age of primary 2, who I cannot say are outright top athletes, national champions, but who play sports very intensively and well. They are faced with the problem of how to reconcile their personal and sporting lives.
They are facing the fact that they do not fit in with the excellent representatives from the various academies where conditions are tailored to them. In the schools, the consideration is minimal. Very often they want to be good at both sport and school. At the same time, there is no system to make it easier for them - I'm not talking about concessions now, but rather time flexibility and so on. Schools are formally set up to do this, but realistically not at all. Adolescents are able to resist it for a while, but over time it can become just a trigger for burnout. So - I'll endure, I'll endure, I'll endure, until I eventually break down, both physically and mentally.
H.P.: The most common problems faced by athletes is coping with competitions and matches. Some have trouble selling what they have. They have very good results in training while they fail in competitions. Often this is coupled with high pressure from coaches parents or even the athletes themselves. With the combination of study, schooling, sports career and training, it is not surprising. At the same time, the pressure to excel leads to relentless perfectionism.
Talking about the training sessions, what can a training plan look like in your experience? Obviously it will vary by sport, but kind of marginally. How often do they have to train? Do they have any room for rest at all?
J.H.: Every sport has a different season set up. There are sports that have it fine because they have a predetermined peak season and then you can make a relatively good plan for that, including rest. Then there are sports that have it spread out over the whole year, in which there is a lack of a period of time where I know I can breathe.
For example, in the aforementioned aesthetic-coordination sports, the resting section is missing. In the period when there are no more competitions, there is a period of training and preparation for the next season. The times when I can rest are getting shorter. It used to be holidays, like Christmas, but even those are now occupied by training camps. And it is this huge never-ending pace that is the source of potential sports burnout. This may not only be a problem for the athletes themselves, but also for the associations that want to increase their visibility by the number of competitions, races and successes. I have a bit of a feeling that children's sport, and by extension teenage sport, is good business. Parents are the ones who are willing to pay. They don't want to hurt the child, they just sometimes don't even notice how overwhelmed they are themselves. Then when the athletes are older, fortunately, they usually realize what's over the edge themselves.
H.P.A: Optimally, the mental preparation can be planned into a yearly training plan, ideally in the preparation phase when there is no pressure of competitions. It is true, however, that some sports structure their annual training cycle in such a way that there are no precise rest periods. There is then relatively little space for personal life, relaxation and everything revolves around sporting plans, which creates a huge psychological pressure on performance.
That was the first part of the conversation about sports burnout. In part two, we'll look at the risk of sports burnout specifically in teens. Do you have anything to say on the topic? Let us know via email or our social media channels.
