5 Signs You’re a Trainer Approaching Burnout

Guest Blogger Chris Cooper,

Trainer Burnout

What starts out with a flame of passion and enthusiasm, flickers out for numerous reasons.

Early mornings, late nights, a myriad of demands and expectations from a lot of people

It’s like a death from a thousand paper cuts. It’s not one thing that causes the crash and burn. Its a slow build up of everything around us.

The key is recognizing you’re about to burnout before it actually happens.

No Longer Excited About Work

One of the first signs is you’re no longer excited about your work or going to the gym. Maybe you drive to the gym and sit in your car and have to psych yourself up to go in. Or you let out a sigh as you open the gym, ready to fake that smile for the next few hours.

Or you look at your calendar of clients for the day and start hoping for cancellations just so you have a break.

We have a passion for helping people change and seeing what they’re capable of. But there are days when you have that early client and you don’t want to wake up. But it’s a whole other thing when you’re dreading your day.

To put it simply, you’re indifferent towards the day in front of you.

Physically & Mentally Exhausted

We’ve all been tired. Sometimes we don’t get as good of sleep as we could have. However, when we’re approaching burnout, it goes beyond regular tired. You’re drained like your phone battery when it hits zero.

A part of this that exacerbates the exhaustion is that you might have trouble sleeping. It kind of doubles down on the exhaustion.

Easily Frustrated or Irritated

When you’re on the verge of burnout, you no longer have the same capacity for the little things that rip at you, those small paper cuts. Little things add up and you may find yourself frustrated or irritated by something so small.

You feel like you have a short fuse for certain things, things that you would normally just let roll off your shoulders.

Not Taking Care of Yourself

We’re built up as this ideal when it comes to health and physical appearance. However when we’re on that edge, we may not want to invest the time in ourselves. We may not see the point to stay on our nutrition or go exercise.

We may take on some unhealthy approaches to cope as well.

Isolation

When we’re feeling burnt out, we start to isolate ourselves from our support system, if we even have one. This lack of having support to lean on adds to more stress, which leads to more feelings of isolation and thus, burnout.

If we’re working in a gym, we’re less likely to interact with other coaches and trainers, which is probably counterproductive

Additionally, you’ll find that your disengaged mentally from your interactions with clients and peers. You might find yourself zoning out while coaching or trying to spot someone.

These are some signs. There are more, but quite often, these are the ones I recognize in myself. It’s then that I know I’ve lost track of the things that keep me whole and recharge my battery.

Stay tuned for ways to avoid burnout.

There is an A side and B side to life and it isn’t always sunshine and puppy dogs. Chris Cooper has been writing articles and content on performance practitioner self-care for some time now and it is time to spread his great work far and wide. He is a performance coach by trade with a huge amount of experience with both general populations and elite atheltes.

Over the next few months Chris will be posting some of his work regularly into this community.

It won’t be everyones cup of tea, but if it helps one person feel they aren’t alone, take some positive steps forward or accept that their feet are where they are today. Then mission accomplished.

Please let us know your thoughts and lets move this massive performance practitioner, sports coaches and fitness professionals well-being rock together.

Learn more about Chris below.