I I competed as a top rhythmic gymnast in the 2016 Rio Olympics and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and I had been training from the age of 6 to 22, so I thought I had acquired all the habits necessary for a healthy life: eating right, exercising, controlling my emotions, taking care of my body, etc.
But after I retired, I It was hard It was hard to run on the treadmill for more than a minute, and I lost track of when I was running. Fullness or hungerWhy was I suddenly struggling with basic things when I had access to the best mental health resources and physical therapists the world had to offer? Aren’t I trained to know my body, my mind, and the connection between the two better than most people?
For a long time, I was lean, muscular and could tolerate pain, but that didn’t mean I knew what it meant to be healthy.
While the overall health of an athlete in peak training condition may look different from that of a retired athlete, experts say balance is key: All aspects of health – physical, mental and emotional – need to be given equal importance.
Katie Spada, a former collegiate synchronized swimmer and now registered dietitian and nutritionist, said athletes aren’t always as healthy as people think because of the rigors of extreme fitness.
Spada points out that all athletes are objectively “healthy” in some ways — lean body mass, lower resting heart rate, lower blood pressure — but they can also be “unhealthy” in terms of being fuel-poor. For example, female athletes may have reproductive health issues because they don’t menstruate while training, which can affect the athlete’s training. Fertility In the future.
Olympians are characterized by their single-minded focus, discipline, and perfectionism. But these traits can easily take a toll during their athletic careers, and especially after they retire. You can’t tell who is healthy by what they look like, say, or even what they do. Doing the right things, like staying well hydrated and getting eight hours of sleep, is undoubtedly important. But health is much more complicated than that.
Health is “fitness”: the fallacy of perfection
When I left work, I was perplexed as to why the habits I considered healthy – precise diet, consistent exercise, and proprioception – didn’t carry over to my new life.
“When we think of fitness, we often think of health,” says Alexi Pappas, a runner at the Rio 2016 Olympics. author He is also an advocate for mental health in sport.
“But that’s like comparing apples and oranges,” Pappas says of his transition into retirement. “It’s a little shortsighted to say the only thing that changed was that I wasn’t competing anymore, when in fact everything changed.”
Athletes are also perfectionists, so guilt often acts as a motivator.
“The recommended exercise time for the average adult is 150 minutes per week, but most athletes only do that in one day, or one session. Athletes are known for this behaviour, and there is a big gap after retirement. [rewarded] “They could be disciplined or driven,” Spada said, but when athletes continue to pursue the same expectations when they no longer make sense, that same behavior would be diagnosed as a disorder.
Olympians are used to meticulously fine-tuning themselves every day. The challenge is to readjust expectations, because the new routine will inevitably be less rigorous than the previous one. Exercising for fun or for basic health is a concept most athletes must relearn. We are trained to know what to do every day for years, not how to live a life without structure or timelines.
This inconsistency is always a risk, but for most athletes, the problem isNarpsThese are the so-called “non-athletic regular people,” or what college student-athletes affectionately call “non-athletic regular people.”
It takes kindness, compassion, and outside help to realize that sport isn’t real life. In the end, it’s less about regaining control and more about accepting the way things are. “Anyone who is struggling after their athletic career needs to look at their life in a bigger picture and ask themselves, ‘Am I happy with the life choices I’m making? Am I happy with my life?’ Because if you’re not happy with your life, you’re never going to be happy with your body,” says Pappas.
Why balance and mental health are important
Athletes must remember to incorporate social-emotional balance into their lives because it is not the default.
Based on his experience with retired athletes, Spada believes chronic stress is one of the main predictors of future health problems.
“Constant stress affects the body. Stress creates free radicals that can cause cancer and lead to chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. The body has to manage the stress somehow and often this leads to autoimmune diseases, which are probably the most common diseases I’ve seen in athletes.”
Spada says that someone whose physical health is improving but whose mental health is deteriorating is not healthy. In nutrition, both the physical effect of food on the body and the mental relationship to food are equally important. “If you’re not confident mentally in your food choices, your body is not going to benefit,” Spada says.
Balancing a demanding training schedule is also important for any competitive athlete. “You have to have balance to be successful,” says 12-time U.S. Diving champion Jessica Parratt, who is heading to Paris for her third Olympic Games.
She makes time for activities that make her feel “human and normal again,” like eating junk food and hanging out with friends. “When you’re so focused on being as disciplined and healthy an athlete as possible, you’re more likely to experience burnout,” she says.
After newsletter promotion
Dr. Roberta Kraus, director of the Sports Psychology Center in Colorado Springs, has worked with elite athletes for over 30 years. She says: Pivot Programis an initiative led by the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee to help athletes transition after retirement from sports, providing them with access to career resources, financial literacy education and psychological services.
The single-minded focus of Olympic athletes helps them break records and achieve athletic success, but it can also be destructive to the life choices they make later on. As a result, most athletes don’t know where or how to redirect their focus, while the people who helped manage every element of their professional lives no longer have the responsibility to help them.
“Just like drug testing is mandatory,” Kraus said. [once athletes become elite]mental health coaching and seminars on how to manage life after sport should also be mandatory.
Krauss also said,Snowplow parent“Parents invest so much time and money into their children’s pursuits that they begin to feel somehow entitled to their success, which leads to less independence and resilience in young people,” she said. Additionally, coaches don’t want to discuss retirement while their Olympians are still training, because they worry it will “distract the athlete.”
Most athletes start their sports at a young age and never learn how the soft tools they’ve acquired over the years apply to other areas of their lives: how discipline translates to career opportunities, how single-minded focus helps them make decisions about their next steps in life, etc.
“We don’t show them the whole picture,” Kraus says, “we just show them what it takes to get on the podium.”
Rethinking your relationship with food and weight
Many athletes have misinformation about food and their relationship with food can become problematic. I worked extensively with Spada after I retired to resolve my nutrition trauma. She was instrumental in my recovery and sanity. She has over 100 former athletes as clients who are also in nutritional trouble.
“It’s never healthy to be afraid of food,” she says. For example, there’s no need to feel guilty or shamed for eating sugar or fat. Spada says coaches sometimes make the mistake of worrying about an athlete’s weight instead of their body composition, blaming the number on the scale for concerns they have about their ability to perform.
The problem stems from a lack of effective communication and education about nutrition.
“When I was competing, if you needed to see a nutritionist, you were either overweight or had an eating disorder,” she says. “No one saw nutrition as a tool like strength or conditioning.” If that stigma is properly addressed, “it can avoid a lot of difficult conversations and help everyone understand the true role of food.”
Another problematic health habit among athletes is weight gain or loss. Because an athlete’s weight cannot be maintained at its peak forever, it is normal, and often necessary, for them to gain or lose weight significantly compared to the competitive season.
“But regardless of weight level, research shows that weight gain or loss is more detrimental to your health than maintaining your weight,” Spada says. Gaining or losing 10 to 20 pounds during the season is normal for some athletes, but it puts a strain on their cardiovascular systems. “Apart from the extreme categories of extremely underweight and obese, it’s still healthier to be consistently at a higher weight than to cycle through a range of weights,” she says.
My Olympic career taught me how to be healthy
Taking care of my health has always served me well, both physically and professionally. After I retired, I tried to maintain a semi-rigorous exercise routine and dutifully track everything I ate. But it quickly became frustrating. What’s the point of being healthy if it no longer helps me be the best at something?
I had to learn to come to terms with the fact that pursuing new priorities meant some compromise, and that I no longer had to strive to be my ideal self, but simply be my healthiest self. I had to be honest and forgive myself for what felt like a lack of accountability. My obsession with my body and my behavior had served me well as an athlete, but it had become a burden in real life.
Focus got me to the Olympics, but the opposite of focus is what makes me healthy. The more I let go of artificial health goals, the healthier I am. Pappas describes health as a flow state, where your body “[moves] “I spend my time with you in this harmony.” Instead of striving for excellence, I strive for moderation. By abandoning hard goals in favor of softer ones, my understanding of health has become more flexible and ultimately more sustainable. For the first time in my life, the less hard I work at something, the more successful I am.
