Workout Burnout : A Fatigued Personal Trainer’s Guide to Avoiding It

Apr 11, 2021 | Blog | 0 comments

It was going on two years of feeling flat, demotivated and needing to sleep from extreme tiredness after teaching my gym classes.

My clients were always bubbly and energised afterwards, but here I was, desperately wanting to go home, escape the busy gym and just lay on the couch.

If you knew me at that point you would have seen a fun, happy go lucky and successful young personal trainer.

But the reality was I was getting sick every couple of months, feeling numb from exhaustion and my moods were high and very low at times. I just couldn’t find balance.

As fate would have it, I finally got diagnosed with adrenal fatigue and was told by a doctor I quickly had to stop everything I was doing to heal. He said my adrenal glands were ‘burned out’ and had no fuel left.

It was mentally challenging but I started to say no to taking the regular gym classes, although my colleagues and clients didn’t really understand why.

Thing is, burnout and fatigue is not often visible and a fit person can easily be riding that fine line of feeling exhausted and run down, but still push through.

My journey for those next two years involved rediscovering what true health, balanced exercise and wellbeing really was, and I fell in love with Pilates, Yoga, Meditation and softer forms of movement which still gave me strength, tone and wellness with the ‘hardcore’ mentality that exists in part of the fitness world.

Here’s some telltale signs you may be leading into workout burnout and what to do about it:

STUBBORN BELLY FAT:

You may be exercising at a high intensity, several times a week but still have excess belly fat that is hard to shift.

This is a sign that your cortisol levels are out and you are in fight or flight mode too much where your body is constantly stressed.

In this case, more moderate forms of exercise like Pilates, certain types of yoga and low impact fitness sessions (excluding endurance type sports and sessions, as per this study) would serve you better to reduce the stress response activation.

By looking at a weight loss holistically and considering things like sleep quality and duration, food intake and portions, inflammation and overall stress, this will help reduce belly fat overall.

EXTREME TIREDNESS AFTER EXERCISE SESSION:

If you do your workout but then always feel like you are paying a price with lowered energy for hours or days to follow, this is a sign your exercise could be contributing to burnout or the exercise style is not right for where you are at.

I liken the feeling to ‘hitting the wall’ where endurance athletes like runners experience a sudden drop in energy. During the worst two years of my fatigue I felt like this most of the time.

In this case, it would help you to decrease the time spent on your exercise session. For example, if you do 45 or 60 minute sessions, decrease them to 20 minutes.

Although studies show that HIIT style workouts are effective in shorter durations , my recommendation here is that you again decrease these short, intense styles of exercise and focus on more nurturing forms of movement that assist your body back to homeostasis and gently elevate the heart rate.

Studies have shown that Pilates-based exercise not only has benefits for your strength, mobility, spine and alignment, but also your brain function, which can assist with recovery from burnout.

In addition, Yoga has been shown to have a positive effect on your parasympathetic nervous system which helps mitigate the stress response.

YOUR IMMUNE SYSTEM IS COMPROMISED:

You may feel unwell often, or get sick regularly. This is due to a combination of reasons, but ultimately you want to reduce inflammation and the stress response in your body to help heal the immune system.

According to research these two forms of stress: physicochemical stress and psychological stress will cause persistently high cortisol levels over the long term.

Exercise does evoke the stress response and cortisol, so again choosing more gentle forms of movement in this case will help.

It is important to consider your goal when exercising. Over time, as your life changes and as you change, so do your wellbeing goals and needs.

Today, I urge you to check in with your body and mind.

If you know deep down that what you are doing right now within your health and fitness routine may not be serving you, then it may be time to switch gears.

Take a breath, you can do this.

#exercisemarternotharder

Power to your core,

Vanessa Bartlett xo

aka Pilates Police

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