Preparing for Transition

Retirement: The end of ones sporting or athletic career. An athletic career can end for many reasons, some of which are in our control and some that are not. Athletes may choose to retire because they no longer have the same passion for the game.  Their college career or Olympic cycle may be ending.  They may be starting a new career or family.  Or their body can no longer handle the pressure and they don't feel they have the same impact that they previously did. For other’s the decision to retire may come from things outside of our control: injury, being released from a team, a contract ending, a team or league folding, or aging out of a league (Brown, Webb, Robinson, & Cotgreave, 2018; Smith & McManus, 2009; Torregrosa et al., 2015).

Regardless of the reason for retirement, the end of our sporting career requires us to come back to other parts of our identity and to work to develop those into more prominent roles. For many of us, we also need to relearn how to schedule our own lives and to eat and train for everyday health rather than competition. Research shows that if we can begin this work while we are still competing, our transition in retirement will be easier (Martin et al., 2014). 

Transition to Retirement

At some point, all of our athletic careers must end; retirement is inevitable. Many of us fail to adequately prepare for this ending, often thinking it will never come, or never looking far enough ahead to realize its inevitability. For those of us who have developed a strong or exclusive athletic identity, retirement from sport can be debilitating, especially if that retirement does not come on our own terms (Lally, 2007; Smith & McManus, 2009; Torregrosa, Ramis, Pallarés, Azócar, & Selva, 2015).

Preparing for Transition

For many of us, the idea of preparing for retirement seems counter intuitive to performance. However, research shows that athletes who are nearing retirement and take steps to prepare themselves may actually perform better in their final year (Lally, 2007). How we prepare for retirement is a personal choice, however the research demonstrates that certain activities have a more positive impact on easing our transition into life after competitive sport. Exploring and setting career and educational goals prior to retirement has been shown to help provide athletes direction in their retirement. As well, engaging in new sports or fitness activities and developing or nurturing social networks separate from our sport has shown to ease the loss of these aspects upon retirement. All of these activities help to develop parts of our identity that we may not have had the opportunity to develop throughout our playing or competing careers (Lally, 2007; Warehime, Dinkel, Bjornsen-Ramig, & Blount, 2017).

Career and Education Exploration

Athletes who are able to shift their focus away from a single sport mentality, by incorporating other physical activity into their lives, have been shown to transition into post-sport life with less psychological difficulty. By setting new physical goals and having different athletic outlets, we can temper the anticipated loss of our athletic role by giving ourselves new activities to look forward to (Lally, 2007).

Fitness Exploration