Let’s be honest. We’ve almost all hated our sport at one time, whether it was the environment, the physical exertion, the weather or our athletic abilities.

Usually, this feeling goes away, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, it carries over into the offseason, when well-meaning parents and coaches push us to practice through our burnout, in the hot summer months and freezing winters alike. We give up our time, time typical teenagers spend elsewhere, training for a sport we don’t even really want to do.

Hatred for your sport might feel inevitable, especially in the offseason. But, while this feeling is common, the best thing you can do for yourself during this time is learn to love your sport. This means enjoying training, having a positive attitude and looking forward to practices.

While this may seem small, the payoff is huge. It becomes easier to get better physically, avoid burnout and get the most out of your high school sport.

Now, I understand that the intended outcome of conditioning is to improve your skills, and I’m not denying the importance of that. But by learning to love your sport, you develop a certain mindset towards your training that makes this improvement easier.

According to the Sports Science Institute, intrinsic motivation, which includes factors such as having fun, exercising, gaining new skills and socializing, has been linked to superior athletic performance. So, while reframing your attitude will help you to start enjoying your sport, better performance will also come with it.

Another benefit of learning to love your sport during conditioning is that it helps you recover from and prevent burnout during the season.

Overtraining is a common cause of burnout. By committing yourself so strongly to something, it’s easy to get tired of it. This is especially prevalent during offseason training when athletes are spending more time than normal with their sport.

However, trying to truly enjoy your training will help keep away burnout. And, if regaining this joy means stepping away from your sport, it’s better to do it during the offseason than during the actual season.

Finally, learning to love your sport helps you to get the most out of it. It’s no secret that most high school athletes don’t go on to play professionally, as the average high school athlete will play through high school or college and not further.

So, for most, it’s more beneficial to establish a healthy relationship with your sport than to push through hating it. And if you do plan on playing your sport in college, trying to love it now will help you love it later on.

All this being said, I understand that it isn’t easy to simply reframe your mindset. There will still be struggles. There will still be times you find yourself hating your sport.

But I’ve finally found that my love for my sport is starting to influence me a lot more than my hate for it. And that’s something I hope everyone gets to experience.