Why Is My Gymnast Always Tired? 4 Common Reasons and What to Do

Is your gymnast always tired? Is she constantly complaining that she’s exhausted and sore, no matter how much sleep she gets? Here’s the thing: a gymnast who’s always tired is usually telling you something, and very often it comes back to nutrition.

Let’s talk about the 4 most common reasons a gymnast is always tired, what to check, and what you can do about it.

By Christina Anderson MS, RDN, CSP, CSSD · Updated October 2026

Why is my gymnast always tired? The 4 most common reasons

• She isn’t eating enough (underfueling)
• Low iron or vitamin D (or sometimes B12)
• Not enough carbohydrate
• Not enough sleep

Often it’s more than one, and they feed into each other.

1. She isn’t eating enough

A high-level gymnast can’t perform her best without enough fuel. When the body is short on energy, it does everything it can to conserve: it slows metabolism, lowers hormones like leptin (which signals fullness) and even drops body temperature.

Signs of low energy availability include:

• Fatigue and poor recovery
• Slow injury healing, stress reactions and overuse injuries
• Missing or irregular periods (see Do Gymnasts Get Periods?)

Together, these are known as REDs, relative energy deficiency in sport. (More in Is Your Gymnast Underfueled? and How Many Calories Does a Gymnast Need?)

Not eating enough also disrupts sleep. It’s not normal to wake up hungry in the middle of the night, and a gymnast who wakes up throughout the night is a tired gymnast indeed.

If your gymnast follows a plant-based diet, eats “clean,” is struggling with food and her body, or has food allergies or intolerances, make sure she’s getting enough energy (calories) from carbs, protein and fat, plus enough vitamins and minerals. A registered dietitian can evaluate her growth, nutrition needs and training needs. It’s incredible how much improves in the gym (and at school!) when athletes fuel properly. For easy family meal ideas, see the Gymnast Meal Plan.

2. Low iron or vitamin D

Iron and vitamin D both need to be tested with blood work, not guessed at and randomly supplemented. These labs are low-cost and usually covered by insurance.

Iron

Iron deficiency is very common in female athletes. In some studies, as many as 60% were iron deficient. Common causes include not eating enough iron, periods, high-intensity training, sweat losses and poor absorption.

Symptoms of iron deficiency (or iron deficiency anemia) include:

• Fatigue and feeling “heavy,” especially in the legs
• Pale skin
• Shortness of breath
• Nausea and getting sick often

Ask her pediatrician or sports medicine physician for a complete blood count (CBC) plus an “iron panel”: serum iron, ferritin, transferrin saturation and total iron binding capacity. This is easy to overlook, so working with a physician who knows athletes (or bringing results to a sports dietitian) helps. Don’t start iron on your own. Too much can be toxic and hard on the stomach. Test, don’t guess. (Listen to Gymnast Iron Deficiency.)

Vitamin D

Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium for bone, and it also plays a role in muscle function and inflammation, protein synthesis, hormones and the immune system. All of these matter for adapting to training and recovering. Fatigue and lethargy can be signs of low vitamin D.

The lab to ask for is 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D), not 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D. Under 20 ng/mL is considered deficient and under 30 ng/mL insufficient. For athletes, I like to see it closer to 40 ng/mL. It’s worth checking if she’s always tired, doesn’t eat much dairy, may be underfueling or plays an aesthetic sport like gymnastics. Vitamin D is fat-soluble, so it builds up in the body. Supplement only with guidance from her physician. (More in Gymnast Bone Health.)

Vitamin B12

Low B12 can also cause fatigue. It’s more common in vegan and vegetarian athletes, since B12 mostly comes from animal foods. Testing usually starts with a CBC, and her physician may order more labs to sort out B12 vs. folate, since one can mask the other.

3. She isn’t eating enough carbohydrate

Carbohydrates are probably the most demonized food group in gymnastics. They’re wrongly blamed for “weight gain” and other issues taken totally out of context. But carbs are a gymnast’s main fuel for high-intensity training.

Not eating enough carbs can also disrupt sleep. Carbs play a role in making melatonin and serotonin, which help regulate sleep and mood. If your gymnast isn’t eating enough carbs and isn’t sleeping well, it’s worth looking at from both the sleep and the performance angle. It could be an easy fix for the gymnast who’s always tired. (And for long practices, see Top 3 Mistakes With Intra-Workout Nutrition.)

4. She isn’t getting enough sleep

Sleep matters for appetite, body composition, recovery and mental health. Research shows a strong link between too little sleep and higher injury risk. Teens who are short on sleep also crave more sweets. There’s nothing wrong with fun foods, but if your gymnast is always craving sugar, she may be A) not eating enough, B) not sleeping enough or C) all of the above. (More in Gymnast Sleep.)

Good sleep habits:

• Cut caffeine early. Caffeine stays in the body for hours, so stop by early afternoon. Teens should have no more than about 100 mg a day, roughly one small cup of coffee.
• Keep the room dark and cool. Blackout curtains and a fan go a long way.
• Stay consistent. Avoid sleeping in for hours on weekends or long naps that throw off the schedule.
• Get electronics out of the bedroom, including the phone.

Late practices, homework and dinner

Gymnastics takes a lot of time. With 20-30+ hours a week in the gym, school and everything else, sleep often draws the short straw.

If she trains 4-8 PM or 5-9 PM, getting most homework done before practice helps a lot. Many gymnasts can get an athletic study hall at the end of the school day, and sometimes homeschool or virtual school is the answer if she still can’t get more than 7 hours of sleep.

Pre-planning and packing food saves time too. Bring dinner in the car for the ride home, or at least a recovery snack to get a head start. It’s easier (and cheaper) to build her plate from home than at the drive-through.

Another issue with late practices: many gymnasts don’t fuel enough during the day, so they come home STARVING and eat a huge dinner, which can hurt sleep. Aim for consistent meals and good fueling before and during practice.

The phone

I get it, it’s hard to part with the phone. But she needs to actually get in bed and go to sleep, not lie there scrolling for another 30 minutes. Maybe the phone charges across the room, or outside the bedroom with a regular alarm clock. These small habits add up to the 1% that separates your gymnast from the rest, and they’re great habits for adult life too.

Frequently asked questions

Get help for your gymnast

If your gymnast is always tired, look at her fueling first. A registered dietitian with training in pediatric sports nutrition can help sort out whether it’s food, labs, sleep or all of the above. Start with our free masterclass or take the free Gymnast Fueling Quiz. And if you want more than a generic meal plan, The Balanced Gymnast® Program is our 1:1 program, built by a former gymnast, nationally rated NCAA/USAG judge and pediatric sports dietitian who lives and breathes this sport. We build her plan around HER: her training, her labs, her sleep and the foods she actually likes, so she can close the recovery gap each and every day.