Resistance training and cardio training offer protection against burnout
Employees, freelance workers and entrepreneurs are less likely to succumb to a burnout if they do an intensive training session twice a week. Psychologists at the University of New England in Australia discovered that both strength training and cardio training reduce the chances of having a burnout.
Burnout
The term burnout was coined in 1975 by the American psychologist Christina Maslach. According to Maslach a burnout has three components.
The most obvious of these is emotional exhaustion, followed by depersonalisation. Depersonalisation is when someone develops a negative and often cynical attitude towards their colleagues, the organisation where they work and the work itself. The third component in a burnout is that someone's sense of personal accomplishment decreases.
Study
The Australian researchers wanted to find out whether doing sports would reduce the likelihood of developing a burnout, so they got 29 subjects, aged between 19 and 68, to train three times a week for a period of four weeks. Each session lasted at least half an hour. Twenty subjects did cardio training and 9 did weight training. A control group of 20 people did no sports at all.
Results
At the beginning and end of the four weeks the researchers got the subjects to fill in a questionnaire designed in the 1980s by Maslach to measure burnout. The figures below show that cardio training reduced emotional exhaustion and that resistance training boosted the subjects' personal accomplishment.
In addition, resistance training and cardio training both increased the feeling of psychological wellbeing and reduced the amount of stress that the subjects reported.
Conclusion
"This research provides a valuable supplement that attests to the significant benefit of exercise to both individuals and organisations in increasing well-being, reducing perceived stress, and reducing burnout", the researchers wrote.
"The positive effect of resistance training on personal accomplishment and the psychological distress reducing effects of cardiovascular exercise are exciting extensions of the current literature which, if replicated, can support health and fitness professionals in developing exercise programs for optimal physical and psychological health."
Reference: PeerJ. 2015 Apr 9;3:e891.