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Are You in a Workout Burnout? – Know What the Symptoms Are and How to Overcome Them

Inline Skating, Medicine Ball

I’m a certified personal trainer and have known people, from novices to veteran fitness enthusiasts, who experienced workout burnout. Even I myself have experienced “burnout” when it comes to adhering to an exercise regimen. There are definite signs of this common phenomenon, and it can also be easily treated. Here are the classic signs:

Skipping workouts for no good reason.

Cutting workouts short – not because of a change in routine, but because you kept looking at the time; were distracted by interfering thoughts unrelated to exercise; you just didn’t feel like doing those last few routines that normally conclude your workouts; you made poor excuses to exit the gym prematurely, such as hunger or having to check e-mail.

Reaching muscle “failure” or “burn” is now a struggle, when it used to come easy.

You feel guilty, but you just can’t seem to pick yourself up.

On the other hand, you may no longer feel guilty about missed workout sessions.

Overtraining is not a symptom of workout burnout; but it can lead to it. Thus, be on the lookout for signs of overtraining: unexpected drop in exercise performance, general fatigue as well as not recovering from workouts, mood changes, disrupted sleep, skipped menstruation, injuries that don’t heal, rapid resting heart rate, slower recovery of exercise heart rate, persistent soreness, suppressed appetite.

Missed or shortened workouts are accompanied by a change in eating habits – a change for the worse.

You’ve lost strength or stamina, due to neglecting workouts; you’ve gained some fat.

It’s easy to just get sick of exercise, if you keep doing the same thing over and over and over. The No. 1 advice from fitness professionals is to change up your routine to get back on track, and even long before burnout develops.

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Perhaps your mode involves cardio videos at home. Lock the videos up and get outside for some running or hiking, or even go on a walk with some hand weights. Or use cardio equipment at a gym or take a group class. Sign up for something totally different, such as inline skating classes, boot camp classes or belly dancing.

Write down your goals. Set up a different exercise plan. Designate certain days of the week for certain workouts. Do not spend that week gorging and loafing around. Investigate exercise programs you’ve never tried before.

If you use mostly resistance machines, replace some with free weights. If you do mostly free weights, get in some machine work. And/or, change up your routines. For example, if you’re sick of barbell squats, then instead of forcing yourself through them and thus outputting only 70 percent effort due to loss of interest, try some hack squats. The newness will motivate you to put forth much more effort.

Just like your car needs an oil change every 12 weeks, your workout needs a good change every 12 weeks. For example, replace barbell workouts with dumbbell workouts. Instead of a chest-triceps day, do a triceps-biceps day. Or, you can alter your rep-max numbers for some routines.

If 8-12 weeks is too long, then make minor changes to your regimen every four weeks, like replacing the weight lifting bench with a stability ball, or incorporating a medicine ball into your core routines.

You might want to consider setting up a small home gym consisting of a stability ball, stepper platform, jump rope, tension bands, medicine ball and a few pairs of light dumbbells. On days you just don’t feel like hitting the gym, spend 45 minutes with these smaller implements. It certainly beats doing no workout at all. Exercise first thing in the morning to get it out of the way. Then you won’t have excuses if you wait till after work.