Taylor Fukunaga
Special to the Campus Times
“I knew it and I could feel it; my career was over,” said junior business administration major Jocelyn Flores, a former University of La Verne softball catcher. She could feel it in her throwing arm, the tingling nerves and the shots of pain were brutal. She had reached a breaking point that cost her softball career and athletic identity.
Flores, like many college athletes, is familiar with the “no pain, no gain” mentality, the philosophy which preaches that the only way to improve is through enduring hardship. The phrase was made popular by actress and fitness enthusiast Jane Fonda whose aerobic videos were popular in the 1980s. According to the MEDCO Sports Medicine Company, this period of time marked the national aerobics craze, allowing Fonda to popularize the mantras “no pain, no gain,” and “feel the burn.”
While its purpose was to push perseverance, it frequently pushed burnout instead. In such a competitive realm where athletes are told to outwork their peers, the notion to never quit under any circumstances has historically led to serious physical and mental health consequences.
The phenomenon is called overtraining syndrome, or OTS, and is common among student athletes. When an athlete increases their training intensity or continuously trains without enough active recovery, it leads to fatigue, burnout, decreased performance and a higher risk for injury.
The National Library of Medicine defines the multiple factors leading to OTS in athletes as:
- Physical load and tedious repeated muscle movement
- Insufficient nutritional habits
- Lack of sleep and psychological stressors
- Environmental factors including heat, humidity and air contamination
Flores said that she experienced burnout as a college freshman balancing school work, softball training, games and family obligations.
“I didn’t know I could feel this tired,” she said. “I just kept going, and it was all I knew. I grew up with the mindset engraved in my brain to just keep pushing.”
Dedication to a sport used to be defined by how many hours one spent on the court or the late nights taking reps at the field. The grind mentality ultimately pushed athletes past their limits, a symbol that separated the so-called “good athletes” from “great athletes.”
Today, athletes are striving for a new gold standard, one that embraces the importance of listening to the human body’s signals and maintaining healthy habits that emphasize recovery.
A 2026 analysis of over 140 athletes by University of Groningen doctoral candidate Shuting Li, found a rise in treating the critical “recovery window” in athletes with intentional care for nervous, muscular and cardiovascular recuperation. The window falls anytime between 8 to 72 hours post-exercise, the analysis at the Netherlands-based university found.
The trend in timely recovery has made post-workout care an important component in mental and physical athletic performance. The best athletes are not solely defined by the work on playing grounds, but rather the health maintenance process outside that time.
“I was disciplined, I was always a self-motivator,” said Matt Durant, University of La Verne head strength and conditioning coach. “But at one point, I was overworked. I didn’t have any help growing up and I got worn out.”
Durant was no stranger to the weight room growing up, with his father working in the military and being a football coach. He understands the importance of consistent training to reach specific athletic potential. However, he grew up in a time period when information about interconnected physical and psychological health wasn’t always accessible.
Fast forward, and now athlete recovery is becoming a more evaluated category at the national level.
According to the 2025 NCAA GOALS Study, collegiate athletes are prioritizing more sleep with an average of 6.8 hours of sleep per night in 2025 compared to 6.2 in 2010. They’re also eating more, with the NCAA reporting a trend in college athletes making a cautious effort to get in at least three meals a day.
The behavioral shift is in response to athletes experiencing the effects of mental and physical burnout. While outworking peers and competitors has been a general all-around philosophy, the new science eliminates the element of surprise for burnout and injury.
“A lot of my kids come in now with Apple watches and Fitbits,” Alexander Gasmen, Waipahu (Hawai’i) High School athletic trainer, said. “It’s pretty cool, we never had those back in the day.”
The technology helps users to track their step count and additional activity levels. It also focuses on an athlete’s heart rate variability, or HRV, which measures the time in between each heartbeat.
A 2024 study conducted by researchers Jennifer S. Addleman, Nicholas S. Lackey, Justin A. DeBlauw and Alexander G. Hajduczok published in the Journal of Functional Morphology and Kinesiology found that there needs to be balance between the human body’s sympathetic nervous system, or SNS, and parasympathetic nervous system, or PNS. The SNS increases heart rate and alertness, while the PNS slows the heart rate and promotes relaxation.
Balancing the two is now possible with the technological advancements that illustrate the numbers, giving athletes data-driven permission to rest. What was once left up to interpretation, such as the need for sleep and nutritional breakdowns, now sits on a digital chart letting college athletes know when a workout is completed or when to take a break. It allows athletes to rely on their personal needs and not feel pressured by external factors to keep overworking themselves.
With the comfort of obtaining data to showcase personal success and growth areas in athletes, allowing oneself to follow through and take a step back is the other half of the battle. With an extreme imbalance between the SNS and PNS, mental burnout can be just as painful as physical burnout.
“I was doing so much my senior year, sometimes I don’t even know how I did it,” said Courtney Okumura, former University of La Verne women’s soccer midfielder and 2025 accounting graduate student.
Not only was Okumura balancing the mental stress of being 2,500 miles away from her home in Hawai’i, but she recalls the stress caused by her accounting classes, tutoring jobs on campus and the process of applying to jobs needed after graduation.
“When you’re a part of an (athletic) program that expects so much from you, you want to give it your all. It was all just so exhausting.” Okumura finished her soccer career at the University being honored as the 2025 Co-Female Scholar Athlete of the Year.
For some athletes, the connection between resting and falling behind is preached, causing them to feel guilty for wanting to take care of themselves.
“My coaches say they support transparency when we need off days, but we often get exaggerated responses,” said University of La Verne softball outfielder and senior biology major Allie Colenzo. “We get blamed, rather than our six-hour practices on top of lift and conditioning all while we’re in season. If we don’t come back the next day on top of it, we’re not allowed any more off days for the season.”
At the University, student athlete dedication doesn’t go unnoticed. Colenzo said that when early-morning weightlifting or conditioning is done, the team makes their way to the campus dining hall for breakfast, sometimes during non-operational hours.
“They’re kind enough to let us in, they know we’ve had a long morning,” she said.
Because athletes often curate their daily schedules based on practice and game times, fitting in balanced meals and consistent time for rest can be tricky.
“I’ve had some (athletes) fall asleep in my classes,” Chiyoko Furukawa, adjunct professor of Japanese at the University of La Verne, said.
Sometimes they’ll get up on their own or she’ll wait until after class to wake them up.
“They were always very sorry, but they got their work done,” she said.
Furukawa said that sometimes the best way to see her students succeed is by giving them the support they need.
A 2020 report published by the National Library of Medicine recommends an average of eight hours of sleep per night for student athletes. With the national average being less than that, a lot of athletes experience sleep deprivation that can carry into their daily tasks.
“You have to meet them where they are. I’d rather have my students be healthy instead of fighting to make it through the day,” said Furukawa.
In Durant’s 28 years of training collegiate athletes at La Verne, he’s learned one very important lesson.
“The ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach does not work,” he said. “I’ve grown as a coach with my empathy. I realized that we’re not all built the same and we don’t look at everything the same way.”
Weightlifting and strength-based workouts may work for one athlete, while running and cardio-based workouts may work for another. Likewise, recovery habits like meal plans and sleep needs vary from individual to individual.
A 2024 report in the Journal of Human Kinetics found that when analyzing about 800 elite athletes, individualization in exercise is needed for athletic success. Improving the muscle coordination and quality of recovery will improve the results of specific athletic tasks, depending on the sport, the report titled “The Effects of Resistance Training on Sport-Specific Performance of Elite Athletes: A Systematic Review” found.
One of the ways Durant tries to prevent athlete burnout is by taking note of what he calls his “thermometer athletes,” those who exemplify great work ethic and attitude in the weight room. When he knows his thermometer athletes are beginning to slow down, he knows when he needs to lower the workout intensity for the entire team.
Colenzo is one of those thermometer athletes, and has been able to establish a routine that gives her consistent time for her needs.
“Recovery is ‘me time’ so I can be the best version of myself for my teammates and coaches. That makes me want to show up every day,” she said.
Flores reflected on her athletic career, having played softball for over 12 years. While stepping away from the game was one of the most difficult decisions she’s had to make, she finds herself in a much healthier position physically and mentally.
“I can now take a break when I want to and I don’t feel pressured to live up to what everyone else expects of me,” she said.
“I’ve learned so much as a coach too, I took my ego out of a lot of things,” Durant said. “It’s really about the kids.” Before he dismisses his athletes for the day, Durant always reinforces a mantra that he hopes will take them into the rest of their lives: Eat, sleep, go to class, be great.
Taylor Fukunaga can be reached at taylor.fukunaga@laverne.edu.
Taylor Fukunaga is a senior broadcast journalism major and a former staff writer for the Campus Times.
