Hi all,
I've been faithfully going to practice 6x week for the past last year without missing but for the occasional work event/meeting keeping me away. I'd say about two weeks ago, after having a few months of making some good improvement in my times, I just started to feel bad in the water in general. I didn't feel like I was progressing at all. I felt like getting through practice was all I could do. I'm not ill or anything.
Now for the past week except for Monday, I've ignored all three of my alarm clocks and have not come to practice despite a fully packed bag ready to go.
I guess I'm just a bit burned out. I feel guilty for missing and know that every day that I'm out of the water I will have a even more painful return swim, but that’s just not been enough to get me out of bed.
Any suggestions for beating burn out?
Parents
Former Member
For me, a small change of scenery can help with a burnout on tedious tasks.
One of the examples: recruiting and mentorig a new team member... Often the enthusiasam new people often tend to show can be catchy... and knowing that they may realy on you for some of their accountability works on you too.
Another example:
For me, often entering a swim meet, just for the social side of things is a good change of scenery - even if I finish last in my events. Goal for coming to a swim meet isn't always to swim your Personal Best, often you just want to spend a day doing something very physical, and social.
I used to do a 'fat burning' swim meet day, withoug the pressure to seriously improve my times, but swim as many events as I can, especially distance events. My goal for that swim meet may be to burn as many calories as possible. (Weight loss is often my main goal). Competing is not always just about the speed. Often it's more about competing against yourself.
Swimming several distance events in a meet is a lot less monotonous then a daily 3000Y workout.
Then you get things like this happen... at oneof our zone meets, again, my goal was to swim all of my events, however slow I am.... so I entered 200 back, LCM, for the second time ever. I was in a 35-39 age group, and my time was so slow and new to it that most of the 80 year olds were passing me. Well, I ended up getting first in that event, and a team record for a year... because the event was close to the end of the meet, IIRC, and everyone else in my age group scratched the 200back. So, even though the time was atrociously slow, and I felt kind of guilty for getting first by default, it was kind of fun too.
For me, a small change of scenery can help with a burnout on tedious tasks.
One of the examples: recruiting and mentorig a new team member... Often the enthusiasam new people often tend to show can be catchy... and knowing that they may realy on you for some of their accountability works on you too.
Another example:
For me, often entering a swim meet, just for the social side of things is a good change of scenery - even if I finish last in my events. Goal for coming to a swim meet isn't always to swim your Personal Best, often you just want to spend a day doing something very physical, and social.
I used to do a 'fat burning' swim meet day, withoug the pressure to seriously improve my times, but swim as many events as I can, especially distance events. My goal for that swim meet may be to burn as many calories as possible. (Weight loss is often my main goal). Competing is not always just about the speed. Often it's more about competing against yourself.
Swimming several distance events in a meet is a lot less monotonous then a daily 3000Y workout.
Then you get things like this happen... at oneof our zone meets, again, my goal was to swim all of my events, however slow I am.... so I entered 200 back, LCM, for the second time ever. I was in a 35-39 age group, and my time was so slow and new to it that most of the 80 year olds were passing me. Well, I ended up getting first in that event, and a team record for a year... because the event was close to the end of the meet, IIRC, and everyone else in my age group scratched the 200back. So, even though the time was atrociously slow, and I felt kind of guilty for getting first by default, it was kind of fun too.
