1 Making a successful transition

Making a successful transition into life after sport is very important because, as you have seen in Session 7, retirement can have a significant negative psychological impact and has been associated with mental health difficulties (Moesch et al., 2018). These difficulties include depression (Giannone et al., 2017), anxiety (Giannone et al., 2017) and substance abuse (Ponizovskiy, 2013).

Strategies aimed at preventing such difficulties when retirement inevitably occurs are key to avoiding a ‘crisis transition’ and ensuring a successful one. Pre-retirement planning and encouraging athletes to think about life after sport long before it is expected to happen is one of the most important strategies.

Programmes and support services such as the performance lifestyle programmes you were introduced to in Session 3 aim to help athletes to do this, and later in this session you will explore some examples of athletes who have benefited from utilising these services.

As you explored in Session 7, retirement can be chosen or forced. It is often those athletes who have suffered a forced retirement (e.g. due to injury) and who have failed to think about life after sport who are perhaps most at risk of experiencing significant difficulties. Successful transition is about transitioning into a new career and identity as you will see in the next activity. This can be facilitated by implementing strategies such as sport psychology support, social support and mentoring (Hallmann et al., 2019).

Activity 1 Moving on: finding a new identity

Timing: Allow about 25 minutes

Watch the video below which explores planning for retirement and life after sport, and then answer the following questions. The video is introduced by former professional footballer Robbie Simpson who has set up an online platform to help athletes to plan for the retirement transition.

1. How does athletic identity link to retirement?
2. What are some of the difficulties retired athletes face?
3. Why might athletes be in a strong position to move into a new career?

Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1

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Transcript: Video 1

ROBBIE SIMPSON:

When you're living your dream, making a living from sport, you kind of feel invincible. Sport has been the focus for probably your whole life, and you don't spend too much time thinking about what happens next. But when that reality comes to an end, whether it be through injury, a contract not being renewed, or just because you're getting older, for a lot of people, there is no plan in place for what comes next. And that's a really scary situation to be in.

Only around 30% of professional sportspeople actually choose when they retire. And when you think at any one time there are 17,500 professional sportspeople in the UK, that basically means that there are 12,000 sportspeople where retirement will come before they really expect it.

TOM POYNTON:

Out of nowhere, the click of a finger, and my life turned upside down. And I lost my father, and ultimately on that day I lost my career because that's what stopped me. And at that point, you feel invincible. You feel like you're immortal. You feel like you've not got a care in the world. It's a fantastic position to be in, to be a professional sportsman, but careers are over so quickly. And from a cricketing context, it doesn't support you for the rest of your life, and often, the guys have done nothing to prepare for it.

MELISSIA PETTY:

If someone had told me six years ago that at 27 I'd be retired and trying to look for a job and to prepare myself for it, I would have laughed at them, because you never think that it's going to be your last day on the golf course or your last day on a football field. And I think sometimes if someone had given me the advice I now know, which would be to always prepare yourself and always make sure that you've got a backup plan and a second option.

ROBBIE SIMPSON:

When you've focused on one thing for so long, it can be really hard to find a new identity outside of sport. And research has shown that around half the people who retire from sport face real difficulties when they stop competing-- financial worries, employment issues, of course, mental health issues, and much more. And there's been far too many cases of sportsmen who try and take their own lives after they retire. And it's not just in football. It's in all sports.

So I've set up LAPS to try and address these issues and to help sportspeople plan, prepare for, and find new careers after sport. Sportspeople have so much to offer outside sport. In fact, even Sir Richard Branson wrote an article about the benefits of hiring sportspeople and even gave a mention to LAPS at the end. There's been loads of research in this area, and we've spoken to lots of organizations and academics who are well aware of the qualities that elite athletes have to offer.

PROF MICHAEL DICKMANN:

Sportspeople are attractive to organizations because they've shown from a young age, normally, that they have a goal and they're willing to pursue it, even though it means great personal sacrifices. They are able to basically be resilient, to survive when they don't have success. They pick themselves up and go at it again.

MATT HUGHAN:

Sportspeople, they bring that kind of hard work ethic, which I think we're looking for. They're not afraid to get stuck in. They work together as a team really well, and one of our key core behaviors is about all being one team, chipping in for each other and making sure the job gets done no matter what. I think that sportspeople generally bring those transferable skill sets or more behaviors into the business, which we tend to recruit for over a skill set, for example.

DR MARK SLASKI:

They have incredible focus, and they must think about the task in hand and specifically not let anything get in the way of the objectives that they're trying to achieve. When they are setting themselves an objective, setting themselves a task, there are things that they can't do, things that they have to give up in order to follow that dream.

ROBBIE SIMPSON:

Sportspeople often demonstrate specific personality traits. They're actually well suited to other careers.

CLAIRE BENNETT:

I was always looking, always, for that continuing improvement and that has meant that I've taken that through to my work life. And that means that I'm constantly thinking about how I can be a better performing person and a more well-rounded person in the work place.

End transcript: Video 1

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Discussion

1. As you’ve explored previously in this course, athletic identity has an important impact on career transitions. Those with a strong athletic identity, who have not developed other aspects of their life outside sport, are more likely to struggle with life after sport. As you see in the video, a successful transition into life after sport is about developing a new identity.
2. In support of what you looked at in Session 7, it was suggested in the video that retiring athletes can face financial worries, employment issues and mental health issues. In some cases, retirement has been associated with athlete suicide. In the video, Robbie Simpson states that only 30 per cent of professional sports people choose when they want to retire, which suggests that the remaining 70 per cent have a forced retirement. This again highlights the importance of athletes thinking about − and planning for − retirement long before they expect it to happen in case it happens sooner than they expect.
3. In the video you saw several employers and athletes talking about the transferable skills that athletes gain in sport that can be beneficial in other careers. These include goal setting, resilience, work ethic and team working.

Next you will explore a series of four case studies of athletes who have been through the transition to life after sport. In doing this, you will compare and contrast their journeys and reflect on what helped them to have a successful new career.