Life After: Student Athlete
As an athlete at any level, no one really prepares you for when that chapter of your life comes to an end. It’s a transition that can feel bittersweet with a mix of excitement and grief. In my own experience, I dreaded the day of no longer being an athlete. I was looking for any silver lining to help with the transition and I tried to tell myself how nice it would be to finally have my weekends back, to say goodbye to 6am workouts, and to never experience running 400 meters at a dead sprint ever again. Yet, I was not prepared for the many moments of grief that would come as my college career ended.
I struggled not seeing my teammates every day and losing those close connections. I had moments of regret when something reminded me of the goals and dreams I didn’t accomplish. And I felt the overwhelming grief of losing the identity I had for 12 years. The identity that was most important to me. It was hard to cope with looking in the mirror and not even recognizing the body in front of me.
As an athlete, the primary goal was to compete, but I'd be lying if I said the physical results I saw from training didn’t make me feel confident and accomplished. Not to mention when strangers would see me and ask, “Do you play a sport, you have to?” It was a pat on the back and confirmed all my work was being recognized on and off the track. I would think, “at least it made me look like an athlete even if I wasn’t performing like I wanted to be.”
As an athlete, there are mandatory individual and team expectations around conditioning and practice. I often felt like I didn’t have an option and following the expectations contributed to the physicality that ultimately unfolded.
The physical change that comes with being a retired athlete can be weight gain, but you have others who see physical changes on the other side of the spectrum too. For some, it might be the hardest watching yourself lose the weight and the muscle you spent years working to put on. Whichever is one’s experience, they both can feel like grief and remind them of what once was, and what they might not ever have again.
That last statement might have felt extremely discouraging. I get it. But this is what I hope you take away. Whatever your experience was like as a high school, college, or professional athlete; your body most likely won’t ever look the same, and that’s okay. It shouldn’t.
It’s time you give yourself the grace and understanding that being a performance athlete is just one chapter in your story. We should be proud of our bodies for the countless hours they supported us and allowed us to do what we loved. No matter what your career looked like or how it turned out, showing up and putting in the work to be an athlete is something to be proud of. I am so proud of you for showing up. Yet, to be a performance athlete for the rest of our lives is not sustainable. So why do we still put the expectation on our bodies now to look the same way they did when we were in that season of our life? Why do we put the pressure on ourselves to even have enough hours in the day and all of the resources to train like we did?
I’ve met with a lot of women who come in and ask “How do I get back to the old me and the old body I had?”. I’ve even asked myself that same question a time or two. I then ask them, “What does that mean?” and “Why?”. They usually respond with something along the lines of how they want to get back to being healthy, that they’ve just let themselves go since then, and how it used to be so easy to be active and look a certain way. When we do some further exploring together we often find the root desire has almost nothing to do with their original response. In the hardest time of my transition if I would have asked myself why I wanted to get back to my body as a performance athlete, and answered honestly, it would have had less to do with “healthy” and lack of my own motivation, and more to do with how I viewed my worth, how I thought others viewed me, missing that season in my life, and the expectations I had for myself when it came to what exercising is.
We might not even realize the things we are telling ourselves like, “Maybe if I just looked the way I did back then I could be happy again.”, “Maybe if I looked like that again I would find motivation.”, “Maybe if I looked like that again others would truly see me.”. We say we are trying to achieve “healthy”, yet we find ourselves trying to bargain for the same feelings of being an athlete in an entirely different chapter of our lives.
This is not about how messy it can be to separate our value, worth, accomplishments, and success from being an athlete, but hopefully to encourage anyone reading to dig deeper and challenge any unrealistic expectations you may be holding yourself to when it comes to your physical appearance and definition of “healthy”.
We find ourselves longing for the body we once had because of what it represented. We each had unique body shapes and weights that reflected the sacrifice we put into our craft. So now I want to ask, why are we longing for our body to look the same way it did when we are in such a different season now? The purpose and the dreams we had that carried us through our careers were special and they were unique to that specific season of life. We can all probably agree our lives hardly resemble what they did when we were an athlete and our expectations needed to align with that to be true and attainable. It’s time to give yourself permission to update your purpose, dreams, and expectations for your current season. This season is not any less special, it's just different.
Our current expectations for our health and movement goals should align with our current values and should be sustainable for our current lifestyle. As much as I wish society and individuals wouldn’t set outer appearance physical goals, I understand we still will. So if you choose to do so or find it impossible not to, they should also align with your values, resources, and current lifestyle too.
Trust me, I know it’s not as easy as saying it out loud. There will be barriers and challenges that show up along the way. Just like all the time you put into learning what it took to be an athlete, it takes time to unlearn and relearn how to thrive in the now. Here are a few tangible ways to start.
1- Acknowledge your thoughts and feelings. You are going to have automatic thoughts, sometimes negative and unhelpful automatic thoughts. Practice acknowledging them without attaching to them. Practice feeling your feelings without judgment. You can learn to tolerate the discomfort and listen to what they are telling you.
2- Getting Curious. Often your thoughts and feelings may be a cue you need to do some exploration of your values and expectations. It can be helpful to replace judgment with curiosity. This is where we decide if the expectations we had as athletes still serve us today or not. What was your “why” then and what is your “why” now?
3- Setting Realistic Expectations. Once we can identify the expectations that no longer serve us, we can make room to adjust and honor expectations that better serve us now. What does your life look like now? What do you need now? What are flexible and sustainable goals to focus on in order to set you up for success?
4-Recognizing Strengths. The discipline acquired while being a student athlete can translate to life after retirement. It can be helpful to create a list of transferable skills you learned through the rigors of being an athlete such as time management, teamwork, communication skills, and more. Consider how you can apply these skills to life after your sport.
It was hard work being an athlete and hard not being an athlete. Your experience is unique to you, yet you’re not alone navigating the “new” of what life after being an athlete will look like. I hope you lean into the discomfort and love the body you have today for what it is, not just for what it was or what it did, and for all the ways it will continue to change.