What exercise can -- and can’t -- do for burnout

When psychiatrist Kim Eun-soo set out to study burnout in Korean office workers, she was sure the data would reveal a breaking point -- a level of physical activity that helps until, like adding too much of an ingredient to a recipe, it starts to spoil the result.

“I thought if the amount of exercise got too high, it could actually make burnout worse,” she said in an interview with Korea Biomedical Review.

It didn’t.

Drawing on self-reported health data from 7,973 healthy employees between 2020 and 2022, most of them in major corporations and public-sector jobs, Kim’s team found no sign of that threshold. 

The more people moved, the lower their odds of burnout. The steepest drop came in those who paired at least 25 minutes a day of moderate-to-vigorous activity with 30 to 60 minutes of lighter movement such as walking. That combination cut burnout odds by 62 percent.

The findings, led by Professor Kim of the Department of Psychiatry at Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, were published in June in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

Burnout here was not defined loosely. Participants had to score above the mean plus one standard deviation on the Oldenburg Burnout Inventory, a threshold that captures emotional exhaustion, cynicism and a loss of professional efficacy.

Even among this ostensibly healthy group, nearly 16 percent met the criteria. That prevalence startled Kim, not because it was higher than global norms, but because these were people still showing up to work. “They may be making it through the day,” she said, “but emotionally, they’ve already left.”

Her interest in the topic grew out of a clinical frustration: most burnout treatment relies on rest, therapy or medication, with prevention still a blind spot.

Exercise has a reputation for lifting mood and reducing anxiety, but in an energy-depleted state, Kim wondered, could it backfire? “Especially when you’re already drained, we weren’t sure if physical activity might just empty the tank faster.” she said.

That question -- how much is too much -- became the study’s organizing principle.

Prior research had hinted at overtraining syndrome in athletes and mood deterioration in high-intensity regimens. Kim suspected a similar curve might emerge here: a sweet spot somewhere between doing too little and doing so much that the stress of the activity eclipsed its benefits.

Instead, the data drew a straight line: higher activity, lower burnout. Even those who fell short on light movement but still managed the daily moderate-to-vigorous target saw a benefit. “It’s not just about more minutes,” she explained. “It’s about mixing intensities so your body and mind can recover without shutting down.”

The combination effect, she said, may be physiological as much as psychological. Brisk activity can spur production of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, regulate the stress response and reduce inflammation. 

Light movement, meanwhile, acts like a pressure valve, providing micro-recovery periods throughout the day. “Those minutes when you walk to a colleague’s desk or stroll after lunch aren’t trivial,” she said. “They give the nervous system space to reset.”

Gender differences were smaller than she expected. Both men and women benefited from higher activity, but there were nuances. Burnout was more common in women, especially younger, unmarried women who slept less. 

The optimal mix varied slightly, with men doing best when they paired longer bouts of light activity with their higher-intensity exercise, and women when they kept the lighter component shorter. The difference was not large, she said, but it was consistent enough to notice.

The data, gathered during the pandemic, might have amplified these effects. Lockdowns cut incidental movement from commuting and daily office routines, leaving a sharper contrast between active and sedentary workers. “That period made the relationship easier to see,” Kim said.

She is careful about how the findings are interpreted. Employers might be tempted to use them as a personal-responsibility play, telling staff to work out more instead of fixing toxic workloads or rigid hierarchies. “Burnout isn’t just an individual failure to cope,” she said. “It’s also an environment that depletes you faster than you can recover.”

Even so, she sees a role for small-scale changes at work: walking meetings, flexible breaks or informal fitness challenges that reward participation over competition. “You don’t need to run a marathon,” Kim said. “You need to keep moving, in ways that help you push and also ways that help you breathe.”

But for those already in severe burnout, she cautioned, this advice changes. In cases where daily functioning is collapsing, the prescription is rest, sometimes medication, and often time away from work. “At that stage,” she said, “exercise is not the first step. It’s something you come back to, when you can.”