Life after Competitive Athletics

Transitioning from competitive sports to fitness for a well balanced lifestyle

I remember my curtain call — the last time I would walk off the court as a college basketball player. My mind could not catch up to the moment and then the moment passed. And once that moment passed, I was no longer a college athlete but a former college athlete. Woof!

What the heck does a former college athlete do?

With the guidance of my family and friends, I purchased my first road bike and was introduced to the world of cycling. My well-seasoned cycling family was quick to get me huffing and puffing up Colorado mountain passes. In my family, a 40 mile pedal was not worth talking about if you did not beat everyone else to the top. So there it was, the perfect remedy for my former college athlete blues and compulsive competitiveness.

I later moved to the Bay Area and started to ride with the UC Berkeley club cycling team to get acquainted with the routes near me. I also ran 2–7 mile routes around my neighborhood several times a week to diversify my exercise. Several rides and two crashes later, I began to explore the roads solo. I kept my pace fast and pushed myself to sustain my top performance. I was running and biking every day and eventually became aware that I was one activity short of triathlons.

Feeling scared and dispassionate towards swimming, I took baby steps to properly teach myself how to swim. Sure, I could keep myself afloat and could move a relatively long distance without drowning, but I had no idea how to swim efficiently in a straight line for at least a mile. I watched Michael Phelps swim on YouTube over and over, watched instructional videos for children, and committed to waking up early to go to the neighborhood pool for several weeks to swim laps. And man, did I suck for a long time! I eventually took the plunge with a friend in open water and grew to love the solitude and quietness of open water swimming.

I did an introductory triathlon course where you were guaranteed to not drown in the water or crash on your bike because we swam in a pool with a lifeguard and pedaled on stationary bikes overlooking the bay. Oddly, that experience hooked me to triathlons. Thus, I began a two year triathlon stint. I was not regimented with my training, I banked on my former collegiate days and active lifestyle to carry me well, and it did. My competitive spirit kicked in as soon as I got out of the water (my swim goal was always to make it out alive). I delighted in the triathlon environment, the energy of the participants of all ages and body sizes, and the surprise of the human body capabilities. In my first year, I was winning races in my age group. I qualified for the USA Triathlon national championships which I turned down because I was having a bit of an identity crisis.

I began to burn out and feel lonely. I started to question how important it was for me to perform well.

Who was I competing for? What value did performing exceptionally add to my life? How was my social and community-based life being affected? I decided to explore these questions by not competing yet still embracing the joy of exercise, just in a different way.

I began to adapt my lifestyle to ease up on competition. Instead of exercising at a 9 or 10 on a 1–10 intensity scale, I started to exercise at a 7 or 8. And what happened as a result was surprising!

I learned how to have a dialogue with myself while exercising, and I eventually learned how to debate big topics, reason with myself, and also pray during my exercise. My ears started to hear the birds and the hum of the city, my eyes saw the colors and the cracks in the city, and my nose smelled the ocean and the city stink. I started to enter into the story of my city. I learned that my body began to favor and appreciate a workout that would not send my body into exertion overload. Sure, I still loved a workout that knocked me out for the rest of the day, but I loved having energy in my tank to be an energetic and present daily contributor to my community and work environments more.

Something else was happening in my mind as well. After several months of practicing this different method of exercise, I began to notice that my mental strength was wavering more than I expected. Over time, I recognized a correlation between exercise and my mood. I experienced a greater sense of confidence, positivity, and freedom in my thinking when I exercised and a more consuming darkness, negativity, and constriction when I did not. For the sake of my own sanity,

I wanted to learn more about what type of exercise and how much of it would improve my mental health.

I wanted to learn if there was a minimum level of physical exertion I needed to do to positively influence and even change my mental state for any day. After a year of committing to this personal study, I learned that the state of my mental health could indeed change with exercise. I could feel empowered to positively participate in the day by keeping a good 7–8 level pace — not a fast 9–10 level pace — for a 1 mile walk, a 2 mile run, a 12 mile 10-speed bike ride, or 8 mile single speed bike ride. This usually equated to anywhere from 15 minutes to 75 minutes of exercise. Anything less than that and I was still stuck in a negative headspace where everything felt difficult. Anything more than that was a bonus.

Some days it was better to incorporate hills because I felt more confident or excited and on other days it was better to stay on flats because I felt close to burnout or tired. But, I did not need to make my workout harder for me if I did not want. The last part of that sentence, “if I did not want” became a big factor for me. I learned to listen to myself and adapt in the interest of taking care of my well-being.

By learning to listen and adapt to my needs when I was telling myself, “no” or “not today,” I was also learning how to accept “no” as an okay response in life.

I began to embrace the concept of boundaries and human limitations personally, and it had a positive influence externally, as I applied the same listening and adapting in the workplace and in relationships.

I learned to modify my perspective to make it less about the prize of being physically fit. For me, keeping my physical, mental, and social aspects of my life well balanced and working together allowed me to evolve into a more healthy individual. I learned that if I worked out 6–7 days a week at a 7–8 level (with enough exertion to break a sweat and increase my heartrate), then overtime I felt that I was more healthy and available for the mental and social aspects of my life. By doing this, I was leaving room for my mind to be responsive and perceptive to the world around me and my body, and giving myself the chance to be free from the cobwebs of doom daily.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have competition in my belly and will entertain it when I am on a hill and have some men ahead of me to chase. I let competition be a joyful and welcomed surprise when it comes. As I have gotten older, I have learned that the healthier version of me was not me when I was a college athlete but instead, was me once I grew to accept myself as a former college athlete and adapt to my priorities as an adult.

I now find joy in the simpler things like not being too sore to sit down and not having to plan my days around fitness. There is a time and place to be sore and regimented, but that time and place is no longer in my everyday, and I have grown to love that! I am now disciplined to walk 1 mile, run 2, or bike 8 or 12 as a part of my daily priority so that I can be a mindful daily contributor to my community and work environments.

My encouragement to you is to not be afraid to explore different ways to do the exercises that you enjoy doing. I hear often that people do not have time to workout. If this is true for you, I wonder what it would be like to inventory your time throughout the day and see how you are using it. Is there something you can trade out for 15 minutes of exercise? It has done wonders for me and I think it can do wonders for you!

Contact

Have questions? Want to run hills in San Francisco or pedal up Hawk? Feel free to contact me at hi@brookemeyersf.com