The Difference Between Training Through It And Training Because Of It
There is a version of dedication that looks identical from the outside but functions very differently on the inside. One builds you. The other borrows from you, quietly, incrementally, until the debt becomes impossible to ignore.
Most aerialists use training as a coping tool at some point. That is not a problem. Movement is a legitimate and well-researched mechanism for nervous system regulation, and the research on exercise and mental health is robust and consistent. But there is a meaningful distinction between using training to process and recover, and using training to avoid and suppress. The first builds capacity. The second depletes it. And in a discipline that rewards showing up no matter what, the line between the two can become very difficult to see.
What The Research On Circus Artists Actually Shows
The mental health of circus artists specifically (not athletes in general, not dancers, but circus and aerial practitioners) has been studied, and the findings are worth sitting with.
A 2021 study by van Rens and Heritage, published in Psychology of Sport and Exercise, surveyed 500 circus artists across amateur and professional levels. The sample was predominantly female, and aerial acrobatics was the most represented discipline. The findings showed that circus artists scored significantly higher on measures of depression, anxiety, and stress compared to established normative scores for non-clinical populations. They also scored higher on both state and trait resilience.
Both things are true simultaneously. Aerialists are more resilient than average, and they are also carrying more psychological weight than average. The discipline attracts people who push through. That is a genuine strength. It is also a genuine risk factor, because the same capacity that allows you to train through difficulty can make it very hard to recognise when training has stopped being adaptive and started being something else.
A companion study by van Rens, Metse and Heritage found that approximately 36% of circus artists in their sample were classified as at risk of an eating disorder, a rate comparable to elite athletes in leanness sports. Exercise addiction scores were higher among amateurs than professionals, and higher in aerial acrobatics than in other circus disciplines. Years of experience was negatively associated with exercise addiction, suggesting that with time and maturity in the practice, the relationship with training tends to become healthier. But that is not guaranteed, and it does not happen automatically.
What Compulsive Exercise Actually Looks Like In Athletes
Compulsive exercise is not the same as training hard. It is not about volume or intensity. It is about the function the training is serving, and what happens when it is removed.
A 2023 study by Cosh, McNeil and Tully examined compulsive exercise in a sample of 1,157 recreational exercisers and athletes. After accounting for eating disorder symptoms and sporting level, compulsive exercise was associated with clinically significant anxiety, depression, and stress. It was also associated with lower life satisfaction and self-esteem. The key markers were not how much someone trained, but two specific patterns: avoidance and rule-driven behaviour, and a lack of enjoyment in training.
Avoidance and rule-driven behaviour means training because you cannot tolerate not training. The anxiety of a missed session is not about losing fitness. It is about losing the regulation that training provides, and not having another way to access that regulation. Rule-driven behaviour means the training has become rigid and compulsive rather than responsive and intelligent. You train on the days you planned to train regardless of what your body is telling you, because the rules of the training have become more important than the purpose of it.
Lack of enjoyment is perhaps the most telling marker. If training has become something you endure rather than something that gives back to you, if you arrive at the apparatus feeling obligated rather than drawn, that is information worth taking seriously.
The Aerial Culture Makes This Harder To See
The culture of aerial training is, in many ways, built around the celebration of pushing through. You are praised for showing up when it is hard. For training through fatigue, through frustration, through the days when nothing is working. The narrative of dedication in aerial spaces is often indistinguishable from the narrative of compulsion.
This is not unique to aerial. It is a feature of most high-commitment physical disciplines. But it is worth naming, because it creates an environment in which the signals that something has shifted (the dread before sessions, the inability to rest without guilt, the training that leaves you feeling temporarily relieved but not actually restored) can be very easy to dismiss as normal. As just what dedication looks like.
It is not always what dedication looks like. Sometimes it is what depletion looks like.
I Have Lived This. More Than Once.
I want to be transparent about something, because I think it matters here. I have not just observed this pattern in the aerialists I work with. I have lived it myself.
Circus was my first love, but it was also the thing I was told to stop. Surgeries, recovery, the slow and painful reorientation of a life built around a discipline that your body can no longer sustain in the same way. I chose a different path for a while. Hospitality. A world that, in its own way, rewards the same personality traits that aerial does: the grind, the long hours, the identity built entirely around showing up and performing, regardless of what it costs.
I have always been a workaholic. I know that about myself now, but I did not always understand it as a coping mechanism. It was just how I functioned. Busy meant safe. Productive meant worthy. And when I eventually came back to circus, that same pattern followed me straight onto the apparatus.
When I returned to training, I was carrying something I could not quite name at the time. Part of it was the urgency to prove myself, to look as professional as possible, as quickly as possible. Part of it was fear. Fear that I had lost too much, that I had left it too late, that I needed to close the gap between where I was and where I thought I should be as fast as physically possible. So I overtrained. I overcompared. I measured every session against some imagined standard rather than against where my body actually was. And I did not give myself the patience that any genuine return to practice requires.
I was not training through difficulty. I was training because of it. Because stillness felt dangerous. Because rest felt like falling behind. Because the apparatus had become, again, the place where I went to manage something I had not yet learned to sit with.
It took time, and a fair amount of discomfort, to recognise what was actually happening. The research I cited above gave me a framework for it later. But in the moment, it just felt like dedication. Like I was finally taking my training seriously. That is precisely the point. This pattern does not feel like a problem from the inside. It feels like commitment.
The Question That Cuts Through
The most useful question I have found is not about how much you are training or how hard you are pushing. It is simpler than that: does training leave you with more or less of yourself?
Healthy training, even when it is genuinely difficult, tends to leave you feeling more grounded, more capable, more connected to your body. You might be physically tired, but there is something underneath the tiredness that feels like resource rather than deficit. You feel like yourself, perhaps more so than before you trained.
Training that is functioning as avoidance tends to produce a different feeling. There is temporary relief, the anxiety of not training is gone, the compulsion has been satisfied, but there is not genuine restoration. You feel emptied rather than filled. The relief is real, but it is borrowed. And the debt accumulates.
This distinction is not about effort. You can train very hard and still feel restored afterwards. You can train at moderate intensity and still feel depleted. The question is not what you did. It is what you are left with.
What Intelligent Training Actually Protects Against
Building a training practice that is responsive rather than compulsive, one that includes genuine rest, that adjusts to where your body actually is rather than where you think it should be, that prioritises quality of engagement over volume of sessions, is not a concession to weakness. It is the mechanism by which training remains sustainable over the long term.
The aerialists I have worked with who have the most enduring, joyful relationships with their practice are not the ones who trained hardest in their early years. They are the ones who learned, often through difficult experience, to distinguish between training that serves them and training that they are serving. That distinction is worth learning before the body forces the lesson.
Training through something is sometimes exactly right. There are days when showing up despite difficulty is the most important thing you can do. But training because of something (because you cannot tolerate the alternative, because the rules of the practice have become more important than the purpose of it, because the apparatus has become the only place you know how to regulate) is a different thing entirely. And it deserves a different response.
References
van Rens, F.E.C.A. & Heritage, B. (2021). Mental health of circus artists: Psychological resilience, circus factors, and demographics predict depression, anxiety, stress, and flourishing. Psychology of Sport and Exercise. DOI: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2020.101850
van Rens, F.E.C.A., Metse, A.P. & Heritage, B. (2022). Exploring the mental health of circus artists: Circus factors, psychological resilience, and demographics predict disordered eating and exercise addictions. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 59, 102107. DOI: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2021.102107
Cosh, S.M., McNeil, D.G. & Tully, P.J. (2023). Compulsive exercise and its relationship with mental health and psychosocial wellbeing in recreational exercisers and athletes. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport.
Disclaimer
The content of this post reflects the author's personal opinions, interpretations, and critical analysis of publicly available research. It does not constitute medical, clinical, or professional advice of any kind. Whilst every effort has been made to engage thoughtfully with the source material, the views expressed are the author's own and should not be taken as definitive conclusions. Readers are encouraged to consult qualified professionals and to form their own judgements based on their individual circumstances.
