Burnout is one of those messy things that happens to just about everyone in the pool at one time or another.
We tend to treat it like it’s purely a motivation problem. We assume that it’s the swimmer that doesn’t really want to be there that burns out. While plummeting motivation is one of the key symptoms of burnout taking root, it’s not the only one.
And oddly enough, it’s oftentimes the swimmer who is more motivated who is most prone to burnout.
When High Motivation Becomes a Burnout Risk
A study (Oliveira-Ferrer et al., 2026) out of Spain followed a large group of high-school swimmers across a season.
Periodically, researchers checked in with the swimmers, tracking physical and emotional exhaustion—the core component of athlete burnout—along with anxiety and general commitment to the sport.
Researchers measured two types of commitment:
- Enthusiastic commitment swimmers – The classic go-getters. Stoked to be at practice, passionate about improving, and eager to work hard.
- Coerced commitment swimmers – The ones who felt obligated to be there, mainly because of outside pressures.
You’d think the second group would be the ones who would burnout quicker and harder.
Not so.
Higher enthusiastic commitment was associated with more physical exhaustion–obviously–but more importantly, they were also far more emotionally exhausted.
Why Tons of Enthusiasm Can Backfire
The mistake that coaches and swimmers sometimes make is using enthusiasm to show up every day to the pool and unleash chlorinated excellence as a proxy for readiness.
They’re fired up. They want more work. They must be handling the training like a pro.
But a swimmer can be 10/10 on wanting to train and still be thoroughly cooked. And that’s usually the burden of being so motivated.
After all:
- You want to do more. You are the swimmer who stays late after practice to do extra core work or run the stairs while your teammates shuffle out of the aquatic center.
- You push harder. You don’t pull your punches in training. Main sets are done to the max.
- You are consistent. The only thing more ferocious than your work ethic on the daily is how consistent you are with it. Week in and week out, you are bringing the thunder.
Every rep, every set, every practice.
And in the process, you can get really good at ignoring the “check engine” lights. Fatigue accumulates. There’s no mental or physical time off your pursuit of excellence. Recovery is pushed aside. And eventually physical and emotional exhaustion empties the tank.
The researchers called this the “passion paradox.”
Motivation helps swimmers to get after it in the pool. But it can also make it harder to recognize when it’s reset and recover time.
Wrapping Things Up
Burnout for swimmers is a common but often misunderstood issue in our sport and it tends to sneak up on us, especially when we are all gung-ho on our goals and swim training.
The big takeaway is to not use motivation as the only gauge for pre-burnout fatigue.
There are lots of other check engine lights that swimmers should be on the lookout for, including:
- High rate of perceived effort for “normal” swimming
- Reduced sense of accomplishment
- Sport devaluation
- Consistently poor sleep
- Lots of life stress
- Perfectionist thinking
Being enthusiastic and motivated is awesome…
But so is being able to show up in championship season with a full tank.
ABOUT OLIVIER POIRIER-LEROY
Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national-level swimmer, 2x Olympic Trials qualifier, and publisher of YourSwimBook, a ten-month logbook for competitive swimmers.
He’s also the author of the recently published mental training workbook for competitive swimmers, Conquer the Pool: The Swimmer’s Ultimate Guide to a High-Performance Mindset.
It combines sport psychology research, worksheets, anecdotes, and examples of Olympians past and present to give swimmers everything they need to conquer the mental side of the sport.
Ready to take your mindset to the next level?
👉👉👉 Click here to learn more about Conquer the Pool.
