Grit is Good . . . Until it's Not. When Quitting is Okay

Sport culture loves grit. Stick it out. Push through. Don’t quit on your team. There’s a lot of value in those messages. After all, persistence is part of growth, and we do learn by working through discomfort.

But there’s a line between healthy perseverance and staying in a situation that’s eroding your well-being. Research on athlete burnout shows that when training loads, pressure, and expectations pile up without enough recovery or autonomy, athletes can develop chronic physical and emotional exhaustion, reduced sense of accomplishment, and sport devaluation. Burnout is linked to higher anxiety, low self-esteem, and a greater likelihood of dropping out of sport entirely.

At the elite level, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has been very clear: mental health is not separate from performance or physical health; symptoms like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and trauma are common in athletes and can impair both performance and quality of life.

In other words: staying at all costs is not a virtue if the cost is you.

When quitting (or stepping away) can be the healthiest choice

Here are some situations where taking a break, changing teams, or even leaving a sport altogether can not only be “okay,” but also wise and protective:

1. When sport is steadily eroding your self-worth: If every game, meet, or practice ends with you feeling smaller, more broken, or convinced you’re “never enough,” that’s a red flag. Burnout research in youth athletes links ongoing pressure, fear of failure, and adult expectations with low self-esteem and heightened anxiety. It’s one thing to be disappointed after a bad day. It’s another to only feel valuable when you perform well.

2. When you’re chronically burned out: Signs of burnout include ongoing fatigue, lack of enthusiasm, constant dread about practice, irritability, frequent illness, and a sense that no amount of effort ever feels like “enough.” Sometimes athletes try to solve burnout with more discipline: stricter training, stricter eating, stricter self-talk. Usually, however, that just pours gasoline on the fire. In some cases, the most performance-enhancing move is to step away long enough for your nervous system, body, and identity to recover.

3. When the environment is unsafe or abusive: The IOC’s consensus statement on harassment and abuse in sport is blunt: physical, sexual, and psychological abuse are human-rights violations that cause serious and lasting harm. No performance goal justifies staying in an environment where you’re being humiliated, threatened, manipulated, or hurt. Leaving that kind of situation is not quitting. It’s necessary self-protection.

4. When your values and your sport no longer match: Sometimes nothing is “wrong” in a dramatic way - you’ve just changed. What mattered at 12 may not be what matters at 22. Current consensus work in sport psychology emphasizes that mental health and performance have to be understood in context: what kind of life are you trying to build, and does your sport still support that? If the time, energy, and emotional cost of a sport no longer line up with the person you’re becoming, it’s okay to re-evaluate.

Even the best mental skills aren’t meant to chain you to a jersey

One of the pioneers of modern sport psychology, Ken Ravizza, spent his career reminding athletes that who you are is not the same thing as what you do on the field. The message beneath a lot of his work was simple: you are a human being first and an athlete second.

Mental performance tools - breathing routines, focus cues, self-talk scripts, pre-performance plans - are powerful. They can help you stay in a hard but healthy situation and grow from it. That said, they are not meant to keep you locked into environments that are damaging your body or mind.

Sometimes the bravest, most mentally skilled move isn’t squeezing out one more season or. one more rep on the track. It’s saying, “This isn’t good for me anymore,” and allowing yourself to pivot.

How to tell if you’re “running away” or making a wise choice

A question I often explore with athletes is:

Am I quitting because I’m afraid of discomfort, or because this situation is consistently harming me?

Some reflection prompts you can use (or journal on):

• When I imagine another year of this, what happens in my body: do I feel challenged, or do I feel dread and collapse?

• Is my sport expanding my life (relationships, confidence, sense of self), or shrinking it?

• If my child or best friend described this exact situation, would I encourage them to stay?

• What would “leaving well” look like - saying goodbye, honoring what I’ve learned, and closing this chapter with intention instead of ghosting it?

Talking this through with a trusted adult, coach, mental performance consultant, or therapist can help you sort short-term frustration from deeper misalignment.

Quitting a sport that is harming you is not quitting on yourself.

If anything, it’s the opposite: it’s choosing your long-term health, identity, and joy over a single role you’ve played for a while. And if you decide to stay? Then let it be a conscious, intentional choice, one that includes boundaries, support, and a plan to protect your mental health, not just your stats.