I’m an Elite Teen Climber Dealing With Burnout. Here’s How I Overcame It.

Every day, I face the weighty struggle of getting myself to the climbing gym. It’s hard, which is unfortunate because climbing is what I do.

Even as a teenager, I’ve already dedicated a large portion of my life to climbing, but 99 percent of the time, I’m not excited to train or climb. I procrastinate until the last minute, often coming up with an excuse to cut my training days short, all to get a reprieve from the constant pressure of expectations.

Voices in the back of my head tell me that I will never be good enough, that I’m wasting precious time, and that I could be spending this time on more neglected parts of my life. This makes it extremely difficult for me to find the joy in training.

This, I’ve begun to understand, is called burnout. And I’ve been experiencing it off and on for the last three years.

This story is about burnout, but it’s also about learning to balance different aspects of life. It’s about shedding light on the effects of training on elite young athletes in the age of social media. Most importantly, it’s about keeping your love for what you do bright as our lives shift over time.

What does burnout look like for climbers?

“Athletic burnout” is a state of mental, emotional, and/or physical exhaustion caused by excessive stress and training, according to Sterling Sport Mindset. But burnout can be caused by many things, and it can show up for climbers in a variety of ways. While one person may need a weekend break from the climbing gym, another may simply need a shift in how they approach training. Others may never climb again.

Many researchers hypothesize that burnout is a large factor in depression in athletes as well as chronic stress. The most typical signs also include decreased motivation, irritability, chronic stress and fatigue, weakened immune system, higher resting heart rate, or low self-esteem. Lack of self-esteem itself can be a singular cause of burnout, often leading to plateaus or declines in performance, which tend to stem from over- or under-training. This is something I’ve dealt with significantly, as I often compare myself to other climbers in harmful ways.

It’s also important to mention the cumulative effects that social media has had on young athletes over the last decade. The majority of people posting on social platforms only render the best versions of themselves. I know this may seem obvious, but many recent studies reinforce the harms of the continual comparison resulting from social media. The rising depression rates, decreasing attention span, and general mental health crisis tied to social media also contribute to burnout. This not only stems from the direct effects of social media on mental health, but from the constant pressure placed on climbers and other athletes to be as “perfect” as what they see in their feeds.

The devastating emotional effects of burnout on athletes can even change their relationship with the sport. Feeling the joy that climbing once brought me fizzle out has been heartbreaking. A loss of passion often goes hand in hand with depressive symptoms and resentment—something that I’ve spoken to peers about in the past. Once training becomes too much, resenting climbing arises as a pretty common theme.

Why I started resenting training

I’ve struggled a lot to find a way to juggle my social life with training as an elite athlete. This has especially been an issue over the last two years. As I started to set higher goals, such as sending my first double-digit boulder outside and making finals at National Championships, I must dedicate more considerable chunks of time and energy,

Let me back up: I’m from a small town in eastern Washington. I commute two hours each way to the nearest climbing gym, where I’m on the team. Two years ago, my family decided it wasn’t sustainable to continue driving there three times a week anymore. So we built a home gym in our garage. Now, the majority of my training is at home, and I only travel to the gym once or twice a week.

Last year, I dropped out of high school to homeschool so I could focus more on training. While this did wonders for my climbing, I steadily lost the motivation to get to my home gym to train.

Why? Because I couldn’t see my friends as much as I needed to. I was struggling to get my school work done. And the idea of climbing was fast becoming more unappealing than ever.

For the first time in my life, I hated my sport.

I dreaded training for hours only to get sub-par competition results that didn’t reflect how good I actually was. I didn’t love the process either. And without the process, why was I even there? I envied the athletes who thrived when they trained as much as possible—the ones who truly loved the process.

I spent years of my life trying to understand why I couldn’t enjoy hard training. It’s been difficult for me to accept that it will probably always be harder for me to motivate than some of my fellow competitors.

My challenges with training—which increase during these extended periods of burnout—have never fully gone away. Even now, I feel somewhat repulsed at the idea of going to the gym and training by myself for three hours, even though I know once I’m there, I’ll feel just fine.

It all comes down to balance

Once I stopped comparing my relationship with training to that of my peers, I felt the freedom to redefine what training could mean for me.

Nine months ago, I started working with a remote coach and created a personalized plan geared toward my individual needs and goals. I began training more—six to seven days a week—but with intention. Instead of chaotic unplanned training days, I followed consistent drills and exercises every week. As I saw progress in both my technique and my mentality, I finally felt like my hard work was paying off.

This new found flow continued for four months. I felt strong and proud of the climber I was growing into. But in the last few weeks of 2024, my new training program became unsustainable once more. I wasn’t seeing my friends enough, and all my motivation was going towards climbing. This imbalance, mixed with seasonal depression, made for a terrible combination. I felt another wave of burnout fast approaching as I failed once again to balance climbing with other aspects of my life.

For the first time, I considered quitting completely.

But this bout of burnout was different from my past experiences. It wasn’t just the result of overtraining—it stemmed from a three-year plateau, toxic inner monologues, and chronic stress. This time, I could feel it set in. I recognized the slow decrease in motivation, the panic when I thought about training, the lack of joy that climbing brought me.

I knew I couldn’t continue training at this intensity. And I realized that I needed to prioritize other parts of my life before I could find my love of climbing again.

5 things that can help teen climbers with burnout

Six months have passed since that last experience with burnout. Here are my very own strategies that have made a legitimate difference since then.

1. Find balance

For the first time since becoming an athlete, I began prioritizing my teenage social life. For years, I put training before seeing friends. Then I would wonder why I was feeling so unsatisfied. I waged many internal battles over the experiences I was missing out on. A common one was after-practice hangouts, especially in the weeks leading up to Nationals. Typically, I’m the only one from my team to qualify for Nationals, which means my friends’ competition seasons are over a month before mine. Once summer hits, we have a habit of leaving practice 30 minutes early and jumping in the river. Because I have to dial in my training leading up to Nationals, I usually tell them to go without me.

It may seem small, but moments like these have made me question why I continue to put in the effort that I do. I hated that I was forcing myself to say no every time. Of course, sometimes I’ll have to miss out on plans. But finding balance between training and my social life has made the choice to climb—and climb hard—much easier.

To strike that balance, I created three simple guidelines for myself:

• Rule 1: See friends outside of practice time at least twice a week.
• Rule 2: Don’t beat myself up about missing a lighter day of training.
• Rule 3: Climbing doesn’t define or control my life.

Allowing myself to tend to my other needs made a huge difference. If I could have only made one change, it would have been this one: Reminding myself that I am allowed to enjoy being a teenager, and that doing so doesn’t make me any less of an athlete, lazy, or uncommitted to my goals.

2. Remember why I climb

I am learning to lead my training with my love for the sport. One way I’ve been able to do this? Just-for-fun days at the gym or crag. I don’t track them, but I try to do them as soon as training starts to feel mentally draining. Here’s the mindset I adopt on fun-oriented climbing days:

1. Decide what I feel excited to climb that day
2. Forget about the grade
3. Don’t worry about not doing “proper training”
4. Let myself find that feeling that first hooked me on the sport
5. Climb until I feel done—no shaming, just simply stop when I’m no longer enjoying myself

Ironically, these sessions tend to be some of the longest for me because I can shed the feeling of heavy responsibility that comes with harder training days. This leaves me excited to climb because it genuinely makes me happy.

The minute I start to lose that sense of joy, training immediately becomes a battle. This shift often looks like listening to my body. If I’m exhausted, I take a day off and remind myself it’s a process, not an all-or-nothing situation. This has made an enormous difference and has become a bit of a mantra for me:

Do it because you love it. Do it because it brings you joy. 

3. Switch up the setting

When I’m in a headspace where I struggle with motivation to train, it’s hard for me to get my schoolwork done. I’ve combatted this by going to a bakery or cafe, getting myself a coffee, and sitting down to do my school work for a solid couple hours. In doing so, I’m able to efficiently get schoolwork done while still having the emotional energy to get down to the gym and train.

This tactic might not work for everyone because most kids aren’t homeschooling like me, while others struggle to focus around external stimulation. But I’ve always been able to focus better in settings where there are other people around.

Similarly, when training becomes repetitive or excessively draining, venturing to the crag or heading to a less-visited gym can be a really good way to physically step away from the toxicity, while still climbing.

4. Prioritize earlier mornings

I generally hate waking up early, but I’ve found that starting my day before 8:00 a.m. makes a really big difference for how productive and vibrant I feel. When I wake up and can get my schoolwork done by 2:00 p.m., I have more time and energy to train. I end up having more balanced days when I’m able to effectively manage my time. I also end up feeling more accomplished and pleased with my day when I don’t feel like I wasted my morning sleeping in.

5. Find a sustainable training schedule

One of the biggest factors in avoiding recurring burnout was actively speaking up for myself about how I train. This looked like doing the thing that my performance anxiety fears the most: training less. I cut down to four training days a week, and those sessions were a bit shorter, closer to two-and-a-half or three hours, as opposed to three or four hours.

Reducing my training schedule made a significant difference in my mental health. I haven’t once felt overwhelmed with a training day since I made this change. While my progress has maybe slowed a small amount, the positive changes in my wellbeing and mental health have made training far more sustainable. In the long run, this change has been unbelievably good for my climbing. I am stronger than ever, and most importantly, I adore climbing once again.

Am I sometimes reluctant to get down the gym to climb? Sure. But the shift in balance made an immediate difference in how I felt about training. On a recent debrief call with my coach, I told him I loved this training plan. I shared how much joy the sport has been bringing me again, and how I feel as if I’ve found a balance in my life that I haven’t had for years.

Burnout-free for six months and counting

I’ve come to realize that no perfect solution exists for avoiding burnout and mental challenges as a competitive climber. What I can do is keep my training schedule fluid with my priorities as they continue to shift down the road. Nothing is concrete, and rigidity and guilt have done nothing for me as a climber, nor as a person learning to navigate the world.

There are still days when it’s hard. Voices in my head still tell me that I’m not good enough. Some days, I still struggle to motivate. But these five changes in both my life and approach have made profound impacts. They have also taught me a lot about what I need in order to maintain healthy training as an elite athlete, while allowing myself to nurture the other aspects of myself and my life that deserve attention.

Now, I’m almost 17 years old, and have a far better relationship with climbing than I have in a long time. I’ve grown exceptionally as an athlete, both mentally and physically, over the last nine months. And I’ve learned enough that I want to share my story to hopefully make a difference in the lives of other climbers or athletes facing similar struggles.

Since making these changes, my mental health has been better than it has in years. Decreasing the stress I put on myself has lowered my performance anxiety and helped me stay motivated. Cutting a few hours of training off per week gave me enough time to prioritize other parts of my life that bring me joy. In turn, this has helped me rekindle my love for the sport. In the end, more is not always better.

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