Transcript
[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR:
Giorgio Chiellini is starting his 15th straight season for Juventus. He says studying for a masters in business administration in his free time has helped make him a better player.
GIORGIO CHIELLINI:
[SPEAKING ITALIAN] It gave me a big help. In football if you are not active mentally, if you are not lucid and quick thinking about reading situations you won’t reach a high level.
NARRATOR:
Professor David Lavallee recently published an academic study that shows Chiellini is right. Generally, athletes who study for a second career have a more successful sports career. Professor Lavallee tracked 632 players in Australia's National Rugby League over three years and found those actively preparing for their career transition were more likely to be selected for matches and enjoy a longer sports career.
DAVID LAVALLEE:
Those people that were more engaged in their career, and their educational planning, planning for their retirement, actually stayed in the club for longer, and they stayed in the game for longer. There were benefits to the individual, there were benefits to the club, there were benefits to the game overall.
This is the first study in the world that has actually proved this link. From our perspective, we see it as a missing link.
Iris Slappendel was a pro cyclist for 15 years. She was Dutch champion in 2014. In her free time, she studied for a design degree. She also made cycling clothing, and equipment.
IRIS SLAPPENDEL:
I had all these trainers or coaches who told me either please stop doing all the other stuff that you're doing and just focus on cycling. But I think that's a choice you make. And I felt quite happy doing it the way I did. I'm really convinced it can give you energy as well, that can make you a better athlete if you have any interest in normal life.
DAVID LAVALLEE:
This is the future. I think that for the next 20 years, this is where the performance gains will be seen within sport. I think it will be in the well-being and the welfare area. And I don't think there'll be marginal gain. I think it'll be much significant, much more significant than marginal gains.
I think this is great opportunity in football to be able to-- probably more than any other sport.
GIORGIO CHIELLINI:
[SPEAKING ITALIAN] Studying helped me take away the tension and pressure that we have in football.
DAVID LAVALLEE:
If you do something outside of sport, you are in many ways reducing the stress that you might have with the uncertainty of not doing something else. And a lot of players' identity is very much tied up within the sport. They're very much encouraged from a young age to continue to focus just on one thing, and they foreclose on their identity.
NARRATOR:
Peter Enckelman spent 14 years playing as a goalkeeper for clubs in England and Scotland. Like many of his teammates, he did not plan for life after football. After he left the game, he began a new career with international career company, DHL.
PETER ENCKLEMAN:
As soon as you've got football at UK, you forgot about education. All that went out the window. I was always thinking what am I going to do when I grow up I mean, you're 36, you would like to think you're grown up. But when you're in the footballing world, it's kind of a dressing room mentality sets in. You're 17, it's 37. It's just, don't think about the future.
DAVID LAVALLEE:
Players, coaches, senior management, managers, I think should recognise that if you place greater value on the holistic development of players rather than focusing on just winning in its own right, it actually has a better opportunity to lead to winning. And that's a very different way of thinking from the perspective of just the winning at all costs.
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