After athletic retirement, an athletes entire life will change. The transition can be scary, freeing, or something in between. Each athlete’s transition will be different, and the three reasons below attribute to weight gain post athletics.

3 COMMON THINGS THAT CHANGE IN A RETIRING ATHLETES LIFE

1) Structure Vanishes

Workouts and nutrition are now optional, no longer a requirement. A daily schedule that was once planned by a coach, trainer, or even teammates, will vanish. Many athlete’s find this freedom to be liberating and it’s healthy to take a break. Sometimes, this break period can manifest into a daily routine and can be a hard hole to dig out of.

2) Activity Level Plummets

After retirement, an athlete will often workout 3-4 hours less per day. The intensity level is typically far lower than it once was. Even those who workout every day, won’t need the same amount of calories as when they were competing, besides those training for a marathon or other vigorous activities.

3) Loss of Identity/Motivation

Most retiring athletes may go through a period (at some point) of sadness, lack of motivation, or loss of identity. During competition, an athlete is not only an identity, but it also acts as a career and a social life. Without athletics, many are faced with the question of "who am I?" Without the identity of being a high-level athlete... there can be a lack of purpose or reason to workout. It is common that athletes boycott workouts for this reason. Many times “being healthy” isn’t enough of a motivator.

How to overcome retirement weight gain:

We created the Forever Fit Program for this reason. It’s a customized fitness program where you will collaborate with a certified personal trainer (who was also a former collegiate athlete) to set up your personalized plan.

So where do we start? A great place to begin is by making sure that you enjoy your workouts. When we dread our workouts there is not a chance in the world that we will do them, especially without our teammates behind us. Take that barrier away by only doing workouts you LOVE!

Adjust nutrition: Now that we aren’t fueling for performance it’s important for us to understand what exactly we need. Finding out how many calories you are burning each day will help identify the exact amount you need to consume to maintain or lose bodyweight.

Create a new structure: As athletes, we are masters at achieving our goals, we just need to discover what our new objectives are now, and make a strategy to achieve them. Plan out when you will work out, how much you are going to eat, and when.

We have broken this all down into an easily customized fitness program where you will collaborate with a certified personal trainer (who was also a former collegiate athlete) to set up your plan.