Burdened by high expectations, even great players are suffering burnout.
Roger Federer’s recent US Open win has surely salvaged a part, if not all, of the Swiss player’s long-standing glory. Federer slipped to the number two position last month after four glorious years at the top. For a good part of 2008, watching the ace player lose steam, fans wondered about a possible burnout — or worse, the beginning of a decline.
The burnout question has extended from the tennis court onto the cricket pitch, from stadiums to swimming pools and golf courses. Be it the booing of Sachin Tendulkar on his home ground while playing against England in March 1996 or the two-year slump in Tiger Wood’s admirable golf career in 2003-2004 before he returned to form in 2005, the greatest sportsmen have found themselves challenged by this.
“A burnout happens when you overuse your resources. With an inappropriate activity that one is unaccustomed to, or if one is over-stressed, there is a chance of injury and burnout. What strikes, then, is enthesitis or the inflammation of the origin of muscles and bones in the body,” explains orthopaedic specialist Dr Yash Gulati of Apollo Hospitals.
Injuries in sports — from tennis elbows to spine and lower-back problems and shoulder injuries — are a sore spot much spoken of over the years. Worse today, however, is the frequency at which players fall prey to injuries early in their career. Promising tennis stars like Andy Roddick, Lleyton Hewitt and even Maria Sharapova were at one time among the youngest to rank number one in the WTA, before crashing out to mediocre performances.
Undue pressure at the beginning of a career, and sometimes even before a professional career can begin, is the reason why many youngsters don’t make it far. Former swimmer Hakimuddin Habibulla, who represented India at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, has seen many careers nipped in the bud.
“One of the reasons for burnout in a child is that he/she plays the sport because of parental pressure. When the child is forced to train, or in many cases over-train, or to play a sport only to win medals, the child stops enjoying it and often parents use burnout as the excuse,” says Habibulla, who co-founded and is now the director at GoSports, an athlete management and consultancy company based in Bangalore.
He, however, is of the opinion that the term “burnout” isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. “It is an over-hyped term. There are a few genuine cases of burnout, but often people use the term generically to avoid getting to the real root cause. Burnout occurs due to overwork and exposure to great amounts of stress at competitions over a period of time. Along the way there will be enough warning signs and these need to be picked up early,” he says.
While experts insist that burnout can be avoided by putting a mature support system in place, the meaning of the term itself changes from sport to sport. While some conclude that over-training is the real party pooper at the time of actual play, others suggest that perhaps the kind of training a player is exposed to doesn’t quite match the demand on the field.
Says renowned cricket commentator and journalist Harsha Bhogle, “Burnout is an interesting word because it assumes that players are playing much more than they should. Certainly, there is much more one-day cricket and much more travel today, but people played a lot of cricket in other eras as well — and that is the paradox, that [even] with inferior injury-management routines, players like Sunil Gavaskar and especially Kapil Dev (since he was a bowler), seemed to have had no problems playing as much as they did. In fact, the legendary Sir Garfield Sobers played round the year.”
So, are we training right? “My hypothesis,” says Bhogle, “is that some bowlers do not bowl enough in practice and other games, so when the time comes to shoulder a greater load in matches, they seem to break down.” Perhaps the warming-up and warming-down routines aren’t adequate, say physical trainers.
There is also the consideration that the players’ attention is being channelled in the wrong direction, since major sports have a high glamour quotient. “I would wonder at the discipline of some players. More training doesn’t mean fitter bodies, it means better-looking bodies. It is a debate in the cricket playing world that has been on for some time now,” says Bhogle.
On another level, though, there is the possibility that burnout might hold relevance only in certain sports — those that involve big money. “In our country, burnout is most relevant in cricket due to the number of tournaments and competitions. In other sports like swimming, an age-group swimmer usually trains in high volumes during the season, from about April to July. But the rest of the year there is not much activity,” puts in Hakimuddin Habibulla.
At the end of the day, perhaps we, critics and fans, take an athlete’s journey far too seriously. “I wouldn’t call the case of Federer a burnout. He played good tennis, but the competition came better prepared and exposed his weak points, making him look rusty. It’s part of every athlete’s career. No one is invincible, although with Federer it might have seemed the case,” explains Habibulla. Swimmer Michael Phelps has won over his critics for being able to perform under pressure over a period of time.
They are the champions, after all.
