TL;DR
- A lot of people experience fitness burnout or workout burnout during their fitness journey. This may happen whether you focus on a particular activity or not
- Losing your motivation can be a result of nutrition deficiencies, lack of sleep, other health concerns, focusing too much on outcomes, an overly repetitive workout routine, or overdoing a particular activity.
- Sometimes it may be best for our long-term exercise motivation to take a break from an activity or dump it altogether. However, often we want to rediscover our motivation for a particular physical activity.
- To regain your fitness motivation, you can:
- Get tested for nutrient deficiencies and/or evaluate your overall health.
- Seek inspiration through books, movies, social media, or peers.
- Integrate community by working out with friends, partners, social groups, or a personal trainer.
- Use the 10-minute rule: try working out for 10 minutes and deciding if you want to continue.
- Add novelty and/or challenge to your fitness routine
- Find and/or rediscover your why
- Set a long-term goal
- Reward yourself
Losing Motivation Is Common
It’s a common experience: you’ve been happily working out for months, making good progress, when all of a sudden, you’re just not feeling it. Whereas a couple of weeks ago you went for a run, bike ride, or to the gym with barely a second thought, you now feel like there’s a heavy weight on top of you and your workout motivation. The idea of working out seems so hard, so annoying, so at odds with what you really want to be doing right now.
I had this experience while training for my 7th marathon. It’s normal for me to feel unmotivated on some of my runs or to sometimes wish I didn’t have to do a 12-mile training run in the rain (I mean, who wouldn’t feel that way?) But all of a sudden I was deeply dreading every run over 3 miles. I felt slow, leaden, and joyless on almost every run.
Looking back, I can attribute my negative feelings to a few key things:
- I’d just run another marathon and didn’t give myself enough time to recover and enjoy low-pressure running.
- I made a goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon and was so fixated on my running speeds, I wasn’t enjoying my runs.
- Sleep wasn’t going well for me (partially because of the stress from reason #2)
- I was experiencing an iron (and probably fat) deficiency
Luckily for me I found a few strategies for rediscovering my workout motivation that I outline below. Many of these recommendations are also backed by exercise science and fitness experts. After a month or so of seeking out inspiration, making changes to my diet and sleep, seeking out community, and changing up my running plan, I rediscovered my motivation and love for running. And spoiler alert, I ended up qualifying for the Boston Marathon.
Reasons for Workout Burnout
You too might find that there are clear reasons for your burnout.
As with my experience, studies consistently find that little sleep and high stress dampen energy and motivation.
Nutrient deficiencies like iron and fat deficiencies also reduce mood and energy.
Even more seriously, Relative Energy Deficiency (RED) is a result of consistently under-fueling. It can lead to depression, anxiety, and a host of other medical concerns. Likewise, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is a little-understood disorder that can be brought on by severe over-training and corresponds with a persistent crash in energy that can make getting out of the bed, let alone working out, feel impossible.
Before you get into a WebMD spiral, it’s also common to lose motivation simply because the activity doesn’t spark the same joy it once did. This may be a result of focusing too much on outcomes (like running speeds or weight lifted) instead of enjoying the activity itself. Or it may be from getting bored of your routine.
We are also growing, changing beings and it could be that the activity just doesn’t align with your life anymore.
How to Combat Workout Burnout
The latter rationale suggests that it may be worthwhile for us to explore new and different activities. However, often we want to rediscover our motivation and love for a given physical activity. For example, we may still appreciate the benefits of that activity or feel like it’s an important part of our identity. We may even feel like we have to stick with an activity if we have a big event coming up.
Whatever the reason, there are strategies for combatting burnout that have been effective for me and/or are research-backed.
Assess Your General Health
The first thing I recommend is getting tested for nutrient deficiencies at your next physical, if possible. As mentioned above, low levels of iron, fat, or other nutrients like Vitamin B or protein can seriously impact your mood and mental health and they tend to be more common in female athletes. The good news is that these nutrient deficiencies can be easily remedied with diet changes and sometimes supplementation.
It’s also a good idea to more generally consider how well your diet is supporting you. Are you getting enough protein based on recommendations for your gender, weight, and activity level? Do you get a wide variety of nutrients? Are your periods off—signaling potential hormone irregularities which can be linked to too little fat or iron in your diet?
I’ve loved the Rise and Run and Run Fast, Eat Slow cookbooks for helping me get more nutrients in my diet. I also regularly use Tailwind’s Recovery Mix to make sure I’m getting the protein, carbs, and electrolytes my body needs after a tough workout.
In addition to your diet, how is your sleep? We all know we should be aiming for 7-8 hours. However, females (especially active females), tend to need more. If you consistently feel tired, your diet or water intake could be at play, as could your sleep schedule.
Some basic recommendations for better sleep are to keep a consistent bedtime and wake up time, limit noise and light in your sleep space if possible, turn off electronics at least an hour before bed, and limit caffeine to the morning. If you struggle with falling or staying asleep, I have some more sleep tips available here.
Get Inspired
I love inspirational stories and a little friendly competition. So hearing stories or seeing images of athletes doing amazing things always gets me fired up. For a list of my favorites, see this post. I love watching documentaries about athletes (The Alpinist is a big, albeit depressing favorite) and even watching an action movie like Wonder Woman can get me excited to crush my fitness goals.
Following athletes on Instagram, reading inspirational stories in magazines like Trail Runner, and reading memoirs from athletes are other ways I get myself inspired and excited about being an athlete. Tommy Caldwell has an amazing memoir about his journey as a climber.
For runners, my absolute favorite book is Happy Runner by David and Megan Roche. It is a heartfelt, inspiring story filled with both training advice and reflections on the amazing runners the coaches work with. I’ve reread this book 4 or 5 times, including when I tore my Achilles, and it has always inspired me and put me in a positive headspace.
Find Community
I run weekly with a friend and we always remark how much more enjoyable our runs are together than they are when we’re separate. Working out with a friend, family member, or partner is a great way to bring joy and novelty to an exercise routine that has started to feel a little humdrum. Some people also benefit from working out with a personal trainer. Personal trainers can add a feeling of community and accountability to our exercise routines that can help fire up motivation.
Finding a workout buddy can even improve our fitness outcomes! We’re more likely to work out consistently and for a longer period of time if we do it with someone. Plus, engaging in endurance activities at a pace where we can still talk (maybe not as fluidly as usual, but we can get sentences out) is associated with more efficient fat burning than working out at a harder pace. I don’t know about you, but it’s easier for me to gauge whether I’m at the right pace if I’m actually talking with a friend.
Consequently, working out with a friend can make your workouts both more fun and productive. If you don’t know have anyone to workout with, try joining a class or local group that specializes in your activity. For example, MeetUp frequently advertises group activities for running, hiking, and cycling. Outdoor and running stores (like Brook’s) also sometimes host group fitness activities. You can check out this list of best fitness classes for calorie burning to get even more ideas!
Use the Rule of 10
I love the Rule of 10. And it’s not just me, professional athletes and fitness experts use it too. When you’re feeling unmotivated or don’t have much time, tell yourself that you’ll just do a 10-minute workout. It could even just be a 10-minute walk! If at the end of that 10 minutes you’re still super not feeling it, you can be done! Easy peasy and you still got a nice little workout. Scientists have found that even short periods of working out have health benefits and they can be a perfect option for busy days.
More often than not, you’ll find that you want to continue working out. I’ve often found that around the 10 minute mark I start enjoying my runs and workouts more than expected. You still don’t have to workout for a lot longer. You could tell yourself you’ll just try for another 10 minutes… or 5… or whatever amount of time works for you!
The point is that this trick gives you agency, control, and helps you feel in tune with your body and mind. So often with workouts we bludgeon our body and brain into submission, telling ourselves we must workout even if we don’t want to. By assessing how you feel every 10 minutes and stopping when you want to, you’re giving yourself some grace. You’re also letting yourself enjoy your exercise session in the moment.
Craft Unique Workouts
During the height of COVID, I heard about a guy who used his cycling routes to make pictures on Strava. He would go on a route that looked like a dinosaur or Darth Vader.
I tried to do it myself with running and it turned out to be super hard. But it was also really fun, distracting, and prompted me to run down streets I normally wouldn’t, all in the interest of making a fun picture. I highly recommend developing your own fitness game.
You might draw a picture with your run or cycling route, try different classes or online workouts, workout in a unique destination (beach yoga, anyone?), sprinkle in some challenges (like run your 5K pace or do burpees during the chorus of a few songs), or any other creative option you can think of to make new workouts that feel fun and unique. Recently, I’ve started listening to a Spotify 2000s Pop Punk playlist while strength training and during my weekly long run. The fun, nostalgic music gets me pumped up in a way my other playlists haven’t in a long time.
Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
Similar to the recommendation above, your workouts might be feeling a little humdrum or boring. And maybe it’s not because they’re not unique. Maybe it’s because you’re not challenging yourself enough in the first place. If you think this might be the case, try lifting heavier weights during your strength training. Or you could try some trail runs or speed workouts if you’re a runner. Or perhaps go on a bike ride in a hillier area than usual.
Getting out of your comfort zone can also mean confronting any anxiety you have about working out at the gym, around other people, or trying new activities. You might sign up for some group classes that sound cool but that you’ve always been too intimidated to try. Or see if you can tag along to the gym with a seasoned gym-goer who can help walk you through how to use those machines you’ve avoided trying.
Regardless of the specific physical activity, try adding new challenges to your daily workout and see if it not only leads to better health, it also leads to higher motivation.
Go Back To Your Why (And Stay Away From Numbers)
In the book Happy Runner, the authors David and Megan Roche instruct you to think about your running “why.” Indeed, I’ve found that this practice is one of the best things (and easiest things!) for increasing my own fitness motivation.
You can find your “true” why by acting like a 3-year-old. Ask yourself “Why?” 3-5 times. If you ask yourself why you love working out and your first answer is: because it helps me keep the weight off, ask why again. You might then say, because I have more energy for my family. Ask why again. Because it’s important to me to have quality time with my family. Ask why again. Because I love my family.
All of a sudden a pretty superficial reason for loving your workouts becomes pretty dang deep and motivating. It’s a lot easier to feel motivated to work out when you have a clear sense of your why and remind yourself of it regularly.
Set a Long-Term Goal
Some people find that setting a long term goal helps address a lack of motivation. Based on my own experience, I’d caution you to be careful with this. You don’t want a goal to lead to even more burnout. On the flip side, if you find a long-term goal that you’re genuinely excited about and that ideally aligns with your “why,” it can help renew your fitness commitment.
You can set an outcome-based goal like running your first half marathon, doing a bikepacking trip, or even getting over your gym anxiety (I feel ya). Or you can set a performance-based goal, like bench pressing your weight or running a less than 9-minute mile. The key is to make your goal meaningful and exciting.
It’s then helpful to break that goal into smaller milestones to keep up your motivation. Keep these smaller goals SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) and integrate them into your workout to-do list to keep you accountable.
Give Yourself a Reward
Once again, it may be helpful to treat yourself like a 3-year-old. Don’t we all wish we were 3-year-olds anyway! When you workout despite feeling unmotivated, treat yo’ self. You should also act like you’re Tom Haverford and Donna Meagle sometimes!
I’m not saying go into credit card debt or completely undo all your exercising with a big cheesecake or 7 pounds of Reese’s (as in the picture below). But you might take a bath or watch that guilty pleasure TV show for half an hour. Or you might go for a longer-term reward. For example, if you run 5 times a week all this month, you’ll get new workout clothes, like that cute new pair of leggings you’ve wanted forever.
Take a Break
For some people, this may just mean giving yourself a rest day. If you don’t currently have a rest day (or 2!), then you should certainly add one. It’s important to give our bodies time to recover. Exercise science shows that, indeed, 1-2 rest days a week improve performance over time.
If you’re feeling persistently unmotivated and literally the only reason you are continuing with a particular fitness activity is for the reward you give yourself, maybe it’s time to take a longer break.
Your body and brain could be telling you they need a breather from that activity. Or maybe they’re telling you that you’d have more fun doing something else.
It can be hard to admit that. As a runner and climber, I feel like those activities are key to my identity. It’s hard to shed a part of yourself that you’ve clung onto for so long. However, it’s also important to let ourselves grow and be responsive to new opportunities. Maybe you’ve found a new passion for cycling or hiking. Or maybe you haven’t found your new passion but with a little more time and space you will.
Final Thoughts
Either way, it’s okay to take a break from an activity you’ve pursued for a long time. And it’s okay if that break ends up being forever. There are lots of ways to be an athlete, lots of ways to get exercise, but there’s only one you, so do your thing.
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And remember that I am not a medical professional or personal trainer. Before starting a new workout plan, consult with a professional.