Sports Burnout: From Athletes Overdoing It To Gender Issues

By anDy hUTchiSon

Burnout can happen in any activity, including one people often do to burn off steam and burn energy — sports.

Kevin Cleary, who has had a career as an athlete, coach, and athletic trainer, and owns Athlete Factory, LLC, at 77 South Main Street, where he trains athletes, mixes up the exercise routines when he works with athletes in order to avoid burnout — or overuse of muscle — at the gym.

“We over-compete them at such a young age,” Cleary said of society perhaps putting too much emphasis on trying to get children to pick up a competitive edge at a high cost — both monetary and in terms of the physical grind.

Cleary, passionate about getting the most out of athletes without overdoing it, has been motivated to write a book, Let

‘Em Play, in which he details the lost days of children being active by having fun compared to the focus on expensive sports leagues in which parents invest their children and dollars.

“Too much competition at too early an age, for too long a period of time makes it not fun,” Cleary said.

“I see it with youth sports. The mentality is more is better,” said Newtown High School Athletic Director Matt Memoli, who noted that burnout and injuries can occur when athletes go hard year-round, including when specializing in one sport.

“The reality is a majority of our kids aren’t going to be playing college sports,” Memoli said.

For those who do advance to the collegiate sports-playing ranks, burnout remains real — especially when combining training with studying.

Sacred Heart University psychology professor and a biology student teamed up to research extreme mental and physical exhaustion — burnout — among student-athletes.

Gender And Burnout

Professor Mary E. Ignagni and junior Erin Burgess, a SHU field hockey player, started their research in 2021 and continued their research through this academic year. Specifically, they are exploring a correlation between gender and burnout, as well as student-athletes’ overall well-being and the impact coaches have on managing stress. They hope that if burnout is indeed prevalent among student-athletes, strategies can be put into place to alleviate or prevent it.

The two women joined forces after Ignagni presented research at the College of Arts & Sciences’ annual conference, CASCon, about social media and its effects on females. The subject matter intrigued Burgess, so she contacted Ignagni to offer research assistance. Ignagni responded that she had completed that project, but if Burgess thought of another topic to pursue, she would work with her. That’s when Burgess suggested researching burnout among student-athletes. “Burnout was something I knew of, something I had experienced,” said Burgess, 20, from San Diego, Calif., in a press release from SHU. “I have seen it firsthand. It’s complete mental and physical exhaustion. It’s when something someone loves doing is no longer fun.”

Her interest also stemmed from reports of gymnast Simone Biles’ struggles during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, when the stresses of performing — in front of a global audience that held high expectations for her routines — and other pressures, led the athlete to withdraw from some competitions. Burgess said burnout often isn’t addressed, and if people don’t investigate its causes, the problem won’t be fixed. “We need to make sure the proper supports are in place to protect student-athletes,” she said. While their study focuses on males and females, the researchers wanted to determine if burnout is more prevalent in females.

A Sacred Heart University psychology professor and a biology student have teamed up to research extreme mental and physical exhaustion — burnout — among student-athletes. Specifically, they are exploring a correlation between gender and burnout, as well as student-athletes’ overall well-being and the impact coaches have on managing stress.

Ignagni said recent events suggest female athletes are not treated the same as their male counterparts, which can contribute to burnout. She recalled the 2021 NCAA tournament, when women basketball players were given a substandard weight room with limited equipment, while the men were assigned a larger, better-equipped weight room. “Such situations add to the stress females endure. They’re putting in the same time and effort and putting their bodies on the line, but they aren’t given the same respect as males,” Ignagni said.

With those premises, Burgess and Ignagni began researching burnout in athletes to determine what had already been studied. From there, they formulated a hypothesis and sent surveys to student-athletes, including an “athlete burnout questionnaire” that asked about the students’ energy levels while playing a sport. They also shared the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale, which assesses a person’s overall mental health.

“As we get the surveys back, we have to run the data,” Burgess said. From there, they will look for connections and patterns.

The two also are trying to get a larger sample size of participants so their results will be statistically significant. They are working together with the goal of publishing a paper on their findings.

Presenting Findings

Ignagni and Burgess presented their preliminary results at the Eastern Psychological Association’s annual conference in Boston in March.

“I hope whatever the research shows will be taken to heart,” Burgess said. “Hopefully, our work and that of other researchers will lead to practices that prevent this type of exhaustion or determine why it happens in the first place.”

The Newtown Bee followed up with Ignagni and Burgess this spring.

Ignagni told The Bee: “Added findings we presented at the conference include the following: We found a significant effect of coaches’ gender such that female collegiate athletes with male coaches have higher feelings of burnout, higher feelings of emotional physical exhaustion, and decreased satisfaction with coaching behaviors compared to female athletes with female coaches. The coaching behaviors include social support and positive feedback. All these findings are significant.

“Patterns include that compared to male athletes — noting that our sample of male athletes is very small — female athletes have higher feelings of burnout compared to male college athletes. Also, female athletes have higher feelings of exhaustion, less satisfaction with coaches, and lower feelings of well-being compared to male athletes.”

Ignagni said she has learned quite a bit from this research.

“I have learned a lot so far from studying collegiate athletes. I did not realize how much coaches’ behaviors are impacting athletes, and females in particular. I knew coaching was important for athletes, that is a given, but the impact on burnout is enlightening. Especially this idea of social support from coaches being important to female athletes. We definitely have a lot to look at moving forward from this study as this study is giving us a beginning understanding of burnout and well-being of athletes,” Ignagni said.

Burgess told The Bee: “So far, the data supports three of our hypotheses. Together these indicate that female athletes with male coaches have higher burnout rates, higher emotional/ physical exhaustion, and are generally less satisfied with their personal treatment from their coach compared to if they have a female coach. We’re still in the process of collecting data, but hopefully our other hypotheses will become significant and supported by the samples.

“Being a college athlete, this research has been a particularly interesting way to take something that was such a large part of my life and see it from a new point of view. It has also been a satisfying experience, as the things I have witnessed in collegiate athletics finally have grounded support and reasoning as to why some of my friends or other athletes may be experiencing burnout.”

Sports Editor Andy Hutchison can be reached at andyh@thebee.com.