There are times when the drive to continue to compete is so strong that an athlete can end up staying at it much longer than is probably best. That certainly was the case for Emily Allard who did everything humanly possible to avoid medical retirement. She hadn’t yet, after all, been able to fulfill her dreams of playing in the Olympics and anything short of that goal was unacceptable. At a certain point though, she had to face the fact that the concussion she sustained years earlier had caused such lingering effects that her athletic goals were no longer healthy or sustainable. 

Emily shares how her long history of playing through injury, blocking out pain, and putting up a facade kept her from making the decision to medically retire for far too long and also impacted her ability to fully accept her new reality following retirement. Emily discusses what she’s learned over the past several years about the “athletic mentality” and the unhealthy thinking patterns that caused her to power through even when it wasn’t good for her. 

This episode is chock-full of various aspects of medical retirement: navigating the decision to medically retire, challenges of a layered transition in retirement (working through both physical symptoms on top of the emotional/psychological), loss of relationships with the team, bottling up feelings, difficulty opening up, feeling lost, hitting rock bottom, seeking therapy, the decision to stay involved with your sport or to walk away completely . . .

We hope this episode is especially helpful to those athletes whose intense grittiness for sport has complicated their medical retirement and made them feel incomplete without the fulfillment of their dreams. You may feel like all is lost, but it isn’t. We hope you, like Emily, will be able to find a way to stop running into the brick wall that is “denial” and lean into acceptance in letting go of control of what you thought your life would look like and find fresh hopefulness for your future. 

The decision to medically retire can be a grueling one especially for an athlete coping with chronic illness for years. In this interview, former collegiate gymnast Zoe Schweitzer talks about the challenges of coping with constant setbacks in her gymnastics career including injuries, chronic illness, and COVID-shutdowns. Zoe shares how she came to know it was time to medically retire and what led her to be confident in that decision. She opens up the emotional toll the anticipation of her social media announcement had on her and shares her experience navigating the related grief process of losing her identity as an athlete. 

Through the process of letting go of others’ expectations and building up her identity, she stopped shrinking back and learned how to confidently live in full authenticity of who she is and who she was made to be. Zoe talks about the power of community and how she was able to utilize her existing community for support while also building new community in her transition following medical retirement. Grounding herself in her faith and in finding her greater purpose allowed her to think positively about the future, envisioning a meaningful life even without gymnastics. She also learned that gymnastics wasn’t the end-all-be-all and could appreciate how her athletic career had actually served her well in preparing her for life beyond sport. 

You won’t want to miss the top three things Zoe learned in medical retirement that transformed her thinking and gave her a solid foundation to build a new path forward. 

No doubt every athlete experiencing repeat injuries fears the possibility of the premature end of their athletic career. Enduring years of injury, re-injury, therapies, surgeries, and rehab can take a toll on an athlete, both physically and mentally. It’s always a potential reality that one day, it becomes clear that the comeback they’re looking for is just not going to happen. That day came for Jonathan Giles his sophomore year of junior college and would cost him the scholarship he had been offered to play at Georgetown. 

In this interview, Jonathan shares openly about the struggles he experienced following medical retirement. Self-blame, resentment, changed relationships, unfulfilled dreams, the impact of bottling up his feelings, identity loss . . . were are all part of his journey.

Refusing at first to open up to others about how he was feeling, Jonathan discusses his experience of trying to manage his struggles on his own. Eventually, Jonathan would see a therapist who challenged him to work through his unhealthy thinking and find the motivation and drive to explore new passions. Don’t miss the top three things that Jonathan learned through therapy that would finally set him on the path to acceptance and a new passion for life! Hear how changing his mindset helped him unlock experiences he never thought he would have had. 

Need help finding a sports psychologist or therapist?
Check out these online resources which helped Jonathan find a sports psychologist to work with:
Psychology Today
OnlineWebCounseling.com