5 Ways to Help You Transition from the Athlete Life to Real Life

Thanks to Megan Bierwirth for contributing this story on transitioning from student-athlete life to postgrad life. Megan grew up in Central California and swam for Tule Nation Tritons and Fresno Dolphins. She went to the University of Kentucky from 2009 to 2013 where she promptly decided to switch from being a distance swimmer to a sprinter. She was captain her Senior year and went to Trials in 2012 in the 100 and 50 free. She wrote this piece for her blog, www.femmefantastique.com, where she explores leading a more fulfilled life.

January marks the beginning of the countdown to taper season. Really, you know your coach is going to wait until the last minute (casual one week taper), but you can’t help but be excited about the prospect.

Until you realize that it’s the last semester of your Senior year. And in a few short months, your swimming career is going to be over. Suddenly, taper season seems terrifying.

Okay, not all retirements look like this, especially since it’s an Olympic year. But not swimming anymore is an inevitability that most of us will face in our lifetime. The big jump from seasoned athlete to real life contributor. And as much as we complain about the sport, we know that it has been a pillar in our lives for years. And we’re not sure what we are going to do without it.

But life without swimming can be pretty cool, if you know how to approach it correctly. Here are 5 tips to help you transition from structured athlete to real life success story.

1. Find Something (Else) You Love – No matter how many times you thought about how much you hated morning practice (why alarm, why?!), swimming was something you knew you loved right down to your very core. You put the majority of your physical, mental and emotional energy into the sport every day.

And now it’s over.

But the silver lining to this sad story is that now you get to start a new adventure. If you’re having a hard time figuring out something you love, go to the magazine section on Amazon. There are thousands of magazines, from sheep farming to green living. Find topics that interest you, that you can pour your energy into every day.

2. Set a Schedule – Depending on how long you’ve been swimming, a large part of your life has been planned out for you. You had chunks of the day dedicated to practice, weights, dryland, classes, swim meets, team meetings, studying, etc. When you’re done, you’re going to have so much free time that it can be overwhelming. And you may just end up doing nothing with your day (which is awesome at first but gets old quickly).

Almost three years after becoming a swammer, I’ve realized that setting parameters around my time during the day makes me the most productive. Set a schedule for yourself and stick to it.

3. Join a Community – Swimming is considered an individual sport, but you’ve had a team around you since you first started. Whether it was your family, your coach or the lifelong friends you met in the sport, you’ve always had support.

Refer to step one and find a community centered around something that you love. These are the people that you can chat with about your new dreams and goals and they can keep you in check when you are trying to achieve them.

4. Create Goals – From the time we started swimming, we made goals and achieved them. It was a natural part of being an athlete. Life is no different. Start thinking about goals that you want to achieve, whether they are small in nature and meant for the near future or lofty and are going to take some real effort to achieve.

A great way to help you achieve those goals is to set milestones along the way. Want to start a nonprofit by the end of the year? Set miniature goals to achieve each week, month or quarter that will help you get there.

5. But Enjoy the Journey – You know the feeling. You missed the Olympic Trial cut by .03. It seems like all the time you spent in the water and the weight room was wasted.

Whether in swimming or in real life, it can be easy to get caught up in the end result. Reaching goals is exciting, but by focusing solely on them we can become frustrated with the journey. But if we take a step back and look at the big picture, we realize that the time we spend on the path to our goal is actually the fun part. Journeys can be broken down, but in the end, life is one big journey. And it should be enjoyed.

As the end approaches, tears will be shed and life will be completely different. But with the end of swimming comes the beginning of your life after swimming. And you’re going to do awesome.