5 Ways to Guarantee Burnout

Burnout sneaks up on you.

The slow death of desire. Discipline turns into dread. The game that once gave you energy now drains it. You still show up—you keep hitting, grinding, pushing—but something inside feels gone.

I’ve known world champions under ten finished with tennis before they hit thirteen. They didn’t lose their talent. They lost their joy. They became victims of burnout.

And to be clear, burnout rarely comes from one big event. It creeps in quietly. Through routines. Through pressure. Usually, through the false belief that “more” always means “better.” I’ve lived through it myself—mostly self-inflicted—and I can tell you there are five guaranteed ways to reach that breaking point.

1. Overtraining

Everyone praises the grinder.

The kid who trains through pain, skips rest day, and treats fatigue as a badge of honour. Overtraining often grows from the belief that others work harder, and you’re not doing enough—so you ignore your body’s warnings of pain and fatigue, push through, and eventually your body answers back with injury.

Once that first injury hits, you’ve entered a loop: injury, rest, panic about lost time, double your workload to catch up, and get even more injured.

That cycle keeps repeating until the machine—your body—breaks down, that is, if your mind hasn’t already broken down from the emotional rollercoaster the overtraining loop presents.

INSTEAD: Don’t chase complete exhaustion; chase compounding consistency. Trust that even the smallest push in the right direction compounds into greatness over time.

2. Comparison

Comparison creates a game you can never win.

Someone will always look faster, stronger, more talented, and the obsession with catching them drains you faster than any workout. You scroll through your opponents’ results, study your heroes’ timelines—and suddenly your own story feels behind schedule. You start to believe that success follows some invisible checklist, but that’s the trap. The moment you measure your worth through another person’s progress, you stop becoming yourself and start becoming a blurry copy of somebody else’s journey.

INSTEAD: Compare yourself with your past self only. Ask whether your current self listens better—to your body, to your instincts, to the quiet voice that knows when to push and when to rest. Ask whether you show yourself more patience, more belief, more consistency than you did before. That kind of comparison rejuvenates you because it keeps the focus where it belongs—on progress.

3. Isolation

Parents and coaches often try to protect players by cutting out distractions—pulling them from social events, shielding them from “bad influences.”

The logic feels sound: less noise, more focus. But creating a bubble of focus doesn’t breed greatness. It breeds resentment, and boredom.

Tennis already locks a player inside enough walls—one court, one opponent, one mind looping its own thoughts. When the rest of life shrinks to match that confinement, the athlete feels claustrophobic and the stakes get sky high.

When failure strikes—and it does—the blow feels existential. A losing streak turns into a crisis. But when a player explores other interests, they learn joy can live outside the white lines.

INSTEAD: Insist on a hobby that is cultivated from a place of escape. A musical instrument, photography, reading - anything that let’s them have a complete identity.

4. Micro-management

Too much feedback kills focus.

An athlete can only process one or two ideas at a time, yet many of us fire off constant instructions—tiny corrections after every shot. The result feels less like guidance and more like noise. The player grows dazed, unsure which voice to follow, which flaw to fix. Think of a cat chasing a single laser pointer—locked in, alive, purposeful. Now imagine seven lasers on the wall. The cat freezes, confused, unsure which one to attack then collapses, and waits for a belly scratch.

Feedback matters and great coaches understand rhythm. They wait, and watch. Then, at the perfect moment, offer a single sentence that lands with clarity and truth—one phrase that does the work of twenty scattered ones.

INSTEAD: Focus your feedback. Pick your moment. Fewer words carry more weight. The best feedback is an agreed upon mantra that player and coach share, that doesn’t only fix the problem, but increases joy.

5. Suffocating Care

There’s a fine line between supporting an athlete and smothering them. Carrying their bag, stringing their racquets, entering every tournament, organizing every detail—eventually the athlete feels like you’re more invested then they are. That you don’t even care about them, you just care about what their results say about you.

Unable to hand ether pressure of their results dicating your mental well-being, they fold, and pull away.

INSTEAD: Give them responsibility. Let them regrip their own racquets. Let them pack their own bag. Independence fuels pride. A little space can save a career.

The Long Game

If you want burnout, chase comparison. Overtrain. Isolate. Obsess. Drown in feedback. But if you want a long, fulfilling career, choose balance. Guard your curiosity like a secret weapon. Protect your sense of play—the joy that pulled you onto the court in the first place. Burnout doesn’t come from effort; it comes from amnesia, from forgetting why you fell in love with the game.

If you’ve battled burnout—on the court or in life—I’d love to hear your story. Comment below or send a message.