Beer League Burnout

Beer League burnout is a real thing. This episode is a talk on what it is, how to see it coming, and how to deal with it. 

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Transcript

THE_BEER_LEAGUER: 0:22

Hello, everyone, and welcome to season two of The Beer Leaguer podcast. Very much appreciate you coming back for another round of talking all there is to talk about in Adult Recreational League Hockey, AKA Beer League. First, I wanna thank everybody for making the first season of the podcast actually somewhat of a success. I appreciate all of the likes, subscribes, comments that have gotten on things. Really appreciate it. The more of that stuff you can do, the better. It really helps out, helps the show grow, helps, you know, encourage me to do more things on the show and keep doing these things. As always, you know, I'll mention on here a bunch of times, so you can hear me say check out the beerleaguer.com. That's where everything is, podcast, any YouTube videos that I do, any kind of short stuff, TikTok stuff, posts on any of the social media things, any of that kind of stuff, it's all at the beerleaguer.com. It's the hub for all things that is this Beer Leaguer podcast. So, for the first episode of season two, what happy, fun Beer League substitute are we going to talk about? Are we going to talk about getting burned out on hockey? It's something I don't think people really talk about a whole bunch. I see a lot of people asking questions online about how to tell if they're burnt out, or is this being burned out, or how do I deal with it, or what happened, or, you know, how did other people deal with it and stuff? And I don't know, I've seen people get burned out from hockey. I've gotten burned out from it. I've seen people come close to getting burned out. I've been in that same boat. And kind of how do you deal with it? What is it? What does it mean? And just kind of putting it out there a little bit. I think that's a big important thing. So first things first, what am I calling being burned out from hockey? What's my definition of it? For me, when I think of being burned out on Beer League, what that means is it's just not fun anymore. You're just not looking forward to going to play hockey anymore. You're just kind of losing the passion for it. And all the good stuff and all the bad stuff and all the goofy crap and everything else that goes along with it is it just seems like a chore and doesn't seem worth it. To me, that's what burned out means. That's what I think it is. And I think you see it slowly build up over time, but unfortunately, most people don't really notice it or care to recognize it or even think about it until they've hit kind of that wall of, all right, I'm done. I'm just gonna step away, either step away for a couple years or maybe done, period, completely. That's something I know that you hear a lot of times you talk about with kids that play hockey, that just get burned out on it, because they're playing usually hockey year round, and from age, what, three, four, five, something like that, through their teens, and then just they're done. They don't want to do it anymore because it's just hockey all the time, all the time, all the time. And I hear that a lot, but I think it also a thing that happens to beer leaguers too. We just have a lot more other things going on besides hockey. So especially if you're playing on multiple teams, or you're playing in multiple leagues, you're playing year round, along with having a job, having a family, any other commitments you have kind of in real life, it can be really, really overwhelming to do that. I have seen a lot of people, when they start playing in beer league, if they haven't been playing hockey for a long time, they play, go through like a beginner program or their first team, get super, super excited for it, and then kind of go, okay, I love playing on one team and getting to play one night a week. I'm going to try and play on two teams and start playing in a couple pickups or drop-ins and play five nights a week, and kind of go from zero to two to a hundred really quickly. And then all of a sudden, it's just too much. It's too much stuff. And a lot of times those are the people that just stop playing completely, because they're like, I can't do that. And they don't really know how to pull it back from going all out every night playing hockey to just playing it a couple times a week or a couple times a month. And that's kind of what I want to talk about, because I think that's the biggest thing is recognizing that is one, slowly ramping up when you start playing Beer League. And that's kind of why I'm doing this in the beginning of, I think, for most people, it should be the beginning-ish time of your seasons. I think a lot of them have started around now-ish, and you've probably played a couple of weeks of games or whatnot. And maybe you're starting to see this in yourself, and maybe you start to see it as the holidays start coming around, and you start having a lot more other stuff going on outside of the rink. So that's why I wanted to bring this up now. I think now is a very relevant time to be aware, to be cognizant of this going on. I think, you know, from my definition that I gave of it of being burned out with hockey, it's pretty recognizable. I think it's a pretty recognizable thing for you. Hopefully, you recognize that in yourself if you're getting to that point, before you get to that point where you're just give up on it, and you can scale it back. You know, you can bring it back. Maybe stop going to a whole bunch of drop-ins, or a whole bunch of stick-and-pucks, or maybe stop playing on as many teams if you can. You know, nothing wrong with playing a lot. I like playing a lot. I play in multiple teams. But it can be too much. You know, maybe don't play in the summer if you have a lot of stuff going on. You know, maybe just play like a reserve role or something in the summer so you don't have to play every week. Where I play hockey, it's usually if you're on a team, you generally it evens out to playing about once a week for the whole season. Around the holidays, it kind of gets messed up a little bit, you know, because it can cut the week short and whatnot. But it's usually about once a week generally. So playing on two teams, generally I play two times a week, which to me is great. Now, if I also threw in playing like a drop in, you know, in there as well once or twice, all of a sudden, that's more than half my week, you know, and that's not just the hockey, it's all the things that the hockey kind of entails for it. Is, you know, Beer League, usually our games are late, you know, our games are late at night. So that means you're staying out late. That means you're gonna have trouble getting up the next morning, especially if you have a job that you have to get up early for. You know, doing that once a week is very different from having to do that four times a week. If you're someone that goes out with the guys after a game, you know, or you hang out in the locker room or the parking lot or something like that, doing that once a week, very different than doing that four or five times a week. So just saying you're burned out on hockey doesn't necessarily mean you don't wanna play hockey anymore. It might just mean you can't do all that stuff as much as you wish you could all the time. So maybe even it's rolling back some of that, maybe it's not going out after every game. Maybe it is going, hey, I can only do two games a week that are after 10 PM starts, and you have to miss some of the games like that, that's another kind of way you can work around it, I think. Cuz I hate to see people get burned out from it and then just completely quit. I think that's a kind of an overreaction, really, to getting burned out from hockey. Some people need to. I understand that. But I think a lot of times people just, like I said, go from zero to 100 and then too overwhelmed, and they don't know how to pull it back. But I think there is ways to pull back with stuff like that. And also if anybody talks to you about it, and there's nothing wrong with talking to the guys on your team and stuff about this and kind of seeing what they do and how their solutions are for stuff. Everybody has their own little hacks and ways to handle playing as much hockey as they want or as much as they can for it. You know, and there's no bad thing with pulling back for a season or so and then kind of going more into it, you know, the next year. For me, another thing that really kind of, I guess, doesn't burn me out but gets me close to there, is on one of my teams, I'm captain on the team, which for my situation basically means you kind of do everything for the team, so it's handling, you know, making sure people who's coming to games, who's not coming to games, dealing with the money stuff, and then little things like, you know, bringing pucks to games and getting jerseys and stuff like that. And all that stuff kind of adds up. So for me, I just kind of know in the beginning of a season, the first couple of weeks, getting all that stuff going, getting all that stuff up, you know, bugging people for money, making sure people that say they're going to show up actually are showing up and kind of knowing their routines and stuff like that. I know that that's just going to stress me out and burn me out for the first couple of weeks of the year, always. I have a lot of tools at this point that I use for things. I use stuff like Bench App to do the best to keep track of who's coming to games, and I really, really use it to keep track of financial stuff. I just dump everything in there and use that. It is great. It is awesome. Totally a free shout out for Bench App, which I think everybody at this point knows about if you're involved in Beer League, because I'm sure someone you know is using it, but it's great for that kind of stuff. And that's just something I know, something I plan around. So I'm definitely not going to be trying to play a bunch of other hockey while that's going on. I know it's going to stress me out for a while. That's also one of the reasons I play on two teams, because on my other team, I just show up. I really like getting to do that. I really like where I don't have to be in charge of any of that other stuff. I just show up and play. It's great. You know, the captain sends out a thing, asking who's going to make it. I say if I can or I can't, whatever, and then I just show up and play hockey. There's no other stuff around it. Somebody else is taking care of it. And that's something I've done to help me not get burned out from things. Still enjoy getting to play hockey and not dread going, oh man, when I show up tonight, I got to make sure I got my big checklist or everything I have to have. And I got to double check with these three people that may or may not be there. And then if we don't have them, do we need to call in some spare people to make it or not make it for that kind of stuff? And that's kind of par for the course. That's what comes with what I do for captain a team. I've accepted that. But not having to do that for a team is also really nice to have just that fun side of it. Okay, so some of this resonates with you. You think you might be starting to get burned out from hockey. How do you know? I think the easiest way to know is to think about what's really bugging you and what you're not liking or what's concerning you more than normal about playing hockey. Is it the actual hockey itself or is it stuff around it? If it's stuff around it, if you can avoid that stuff, then great, that's perfect. Just try and cut that crap out and maybe you're good. If it's the actual playing of hockey, then that's a little bit more complicated. Is it actually hockey itself doesn't sound exciting, or is it playing that particular hockey, be it with a team or in a certain league or particular drop-in or something like that, is that what you're not liking? If you were to change that and play in a different situation, does that sound still super fun to you? If that's the case, then maybe you need to take time off from wherever you're at with that, because maybe the competitive hockey, maybe playing in a league competitively is a little too much. Some people get super, super competitive with things, which is totally fine, but you just kind of have to recognize that. So I think it's taking a really hard look to see what of those things it is that's making you kind of lose the love of playing hockey and not want to play, and seeing how you can eliminate that or change it, and looking at that. And hopefully that gets you back in to enjoy playing again. Maybe it is saying, hey, I don't want to be capped on this team anymore. I just want to play, or I don't want to play in these competitive games. I just want to kind of drop out of regular Beer League and just go into a weekly competitive drop in the people have or something like that. Or maybe you want to look at playing in, there's usually most places around have like an over 30 or over 40 leagues, things like that, maybe you just want to do something like that where it's a little bit more casual playing. Although I will put the caveat in there, some of those like over 30, over 40, over 50 leagues, they're not all casual, some of them are super competitive. So go check it out before assuming that. But maybe that's a way that you can still get to play and scratch that itch of playing hockey, but not get burned out from it, but not get to the point where you don't want to play anymore from it. Maybe that's a good way to do it. Another thing you can try doing is just changing what you're doing while you play. I know people that have been goalies their whole life, and they get just kind of burned out, and decide to stop playing goalie, they decide to skate out, and vice versa. And maybe you fall in love with it, maybe it's something you really like to do, maybe it took you until age 40 to realize that you really like playing wing instead of playing goalie. Or maybe even it's as simple as moving from defense to forward, or forward or defense, something like that. Maybe just changing up that dynamic of what you're doing can make a big difference. Now, going from goalie to skater or skater to goalie, obviously, that's going to be a slightly more financially driven decision because just deciding to pick up goalie pads is kind of pricey. Also, deciding just to pick up a full set of skater gear, albeit less pricey, is also not cheap. But this might be a good time to talk to one of your Beer League buddies and go, hey, do you got an extra set of goalie gear? Hey, do you have some shin pads that you don't use anymore and some elbows and really kind of cut down on what you have to buy and hopefully don't have to buy anything. Hopefully, you can kind of borrow stuff and source stuff from everyone. And if you like it, try it a couple of times. And if you like it, go out and start buying your own things. Maybe that's a good way to still get to play hockey, still get to scratch that itch and everything. But just change up your surroundings or for it. And getting to do different things for it and learn new skills can really give you a different perspective on stuff. That is something else that you can always try doing. That's really it. That is kind of all the things I have to talk about for dealing with burnout and hockey. Hopefully, this has been somewhat helpful for you. Hopefully, this is something maybe if you don't need now, these are ideas that can bounce around in your brain, or you can come back and listen to this at another point, or share it with somebody you think that this could help with. Sharing the podcast, always appreciated. So share it with a buddy of yours, a teammate of yours that you think might be dealing with this kind of stuff. Burnout from Beer League is totally a real thing. It sounds funny, but it is a real legitimate thing that can happen. Thank you for listening to episode one, the second season of The Beer Leaguer podcast. Everyone, I do truly appreciate it. Like I said, at the top of the show, thebeerleaguer.com has all the everythings about this show, YouTube channel, all that stuff, all those fun things out there. So go, please check that out. All of your subscriptions, your likes, your comments for these episodes, also greatly appreciated. And hey, you can always leave a comment, say something you'd like to hear talk about in the show. Let me know if you've been dealing with burnout yourself or if you have dealt with it and what you've done for it. And you can also text the show. You can just go into the show description. There's a little link in there that says text the show, click that, send your fun message. If you don't put your name on there, it's totally anonymous. All I see is your area code. So I have a rough idea of where your phone is from, not necessarily you. But would love to hear from you on this. If you've ever had to deal with this or other people that have, and how you or they have dealt with it. All right, everyone. Well, thanks a lot for listening. I'll catch you in the next one.