Top 3 Challenges of Life After Sport
If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you’ve heard (read?) me talk about this in more depth. But whether you have or not, I want to sum up what in my opinion are the most challenging aspects of life after sport. It’s been on the front of my mind lately, and the further away I get from my career (a whole 3 years ago) the more I feel like my eyes are opened to what made/makes the transition afterward so difficult.
These aren’t in any ranked order, because from my experience I think they’re all pretty equal. I could make an infinite list, but I’ll spare both of us some time and just talk about my top three. Your list might look a little different, but I feel like we can all relate to these to some extent!
1) Value/Identity - You eat, sleep, breathe your sport. For years on years. The longer you play, the more it naturally becomes your identity to the outside world because it’s what you do, it’s how people know you, and unfortunately it can become the entirety of the way you identify yourself too. It’s easy to get to this point, and it’s hardly every intentional. The onset of this is pretty much undetectable, and happens at a very early age, which allows it be the foundation of which your entire identity/personality is built.
Similarly, your sport is how you identify yourself. Obviously, you’re proud to be an athlete, to be a part of your team and represent your school, and you want people to know. This is the tip of the iceberg, and it slowly begins to be where you find your value and self worth. The better you get and the longer you play, the more recognition/awards/attention you’ll receive. Once again, without you even noticing, this is where your value is not only found but rooted. Your entire sense of self worth depends on your performance, and your value tends to fluctuate with your stats.
Then, overnight, all of this is gone. There’s a good chance you no longer know who you are or where your value comes from, and you’re left to figure it all out for yourself. You almost have to start from scratch, which can be scary, but is also necessary.
2) Purpose/Direction- I know it sounds silly, maybe crazy, but I truly didn’t think much about life after sport. I mean I thought about it, I knew it was coming or whatever, but it wasn’t my reality yet and I didn’t allow it to cross my mind longer than 2 minutes. I cared about my grades and did well, but what happened after I graduated was none of my concern!! I had more pressing things to worry about, like a volleyball. Until I didn’t.
As I mentioned, it’s been 3 years and I am just now starting to figure out what I want my career to look like, and developing/acting on my passions outside of playing a sport. One of the biggest struggles I’ve faced is feeling like nothing I’ve done since volleyball has truly mattered or had a purpose. Like nothing I could do after volleyball would be more impactful or impressive than what I did on the court. It’s been challenging, but I’m starting to feel like I can see a glimpse of purpose for what I’m doing, and believe that it does matter. This happened the opposite of over night.
If you’re one of the chosen ones who knew what they wanted to do before starting college…I mean good for you honestly. If you happened to spend more than 2 consecutive minutes thinking about it over the course of 4+ years of college, again...good for you. Maybe you figured it out right after college and have been coasting in your sense of purpose ever since then...love that for you. And if your situation is like mine...hate to see it! (But welcome to the club).
Whatever your life/path/journey has looked like, I have a strong feeling that you’ve struggled in some degree in finding your purpose or the direction of your life after sport. It’s pretty normal, and it’s okay.
3) Body- This is the obvious one, we all know how hard this one hits. Simply put it’s just hard to maintain the level of activity that you’ve sustained for 10+ years (esp. at the intensity you came off of in college). This is one I’ve touched on a lot, because it’s such a big deal and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves about it. Your entire life has basically been a repeating cycle of practicing-lifting-competing for countless years. All of it was structured for you, and all you had to do is show up and maybe complain about being there but in reality you actually loved it. At the time it seems like an unbearable task to simply show up, as if we didn’t sign a paper agreeing to it, but really it was a blessing. After you showed up, all you had to do was show out. You got to do your thing and didn’t have to plan or think twice about the structure of the practice, lift, any of it.
Then, as we all know, it’s over. No more “sorry I can’t, I have practice” or “sorry, I have 6am lift” texts to be sent. You’re on your own. Workout or don’t workout, that’s on you. The frequency, intensity, duration, it’s all on you now.
The second layer of this is how we naturally attach #1, our value/identity, to our athletic bodies. It just becomes who we are, and we’ve always maintained a certain body type because of how much training we were doing. It’s science. And it’s hard to feel like you no longer identify with that part of you, whether you keep training or not.
This entire topic is very close to my heart, and it’s because of the extent to which I experienced it all and how unprepared I felt for this part of life. 3 years later, all three of these topics are easier but they’re still not fully overcome in my life (but we’ve come such a LONG way). If y’all have any more aspects which you have struggled/struggle with post athlete, I would love to hear them and talk about them. You’re doing great by the way. Give yourself time to figure it out, and be nicer to yourself during this process.