TRANSITION OR WITHDRAWAL FROM THE SPORTS CAREER

Abstract

Withdrawal (retirement) from a sports career is a period or phase that every athlete must face at some point in their career. This phase represents a key point of study in sports psychology, in terms of what is generated for athletes going through in this type of situation. A lot of writers compare withdrawal from sports altogether to retirement, which is something people plan for a very long time. However, the fact is that there is a difference between these two things. Top athletes may withdraw or give up their sports careers for several reasons caused by various factors. Once they retire from professional sports, they usually enter the world of work like everyone else. However, for the professional athlete who is about to enter the working world, leaving behind years of sports work, he is now faced with a new and often different situation. Not all professional athletes extend their working lives as athletes. This is the first side, when withdrawal or retirement occurs voluntarily, with age-reaching, performance reduction as part of the process and not as an isolated event. The other side that we will also talk about below in the text is, if the withdrawal happens suddenly, caused by several factors: injury, incorrect relationship with the trainer, insufficient support from the family and the environment, lack of motivation for training, which typically manifests in younger athletes when they quit competition before reaching their optimal level of performance (Cervello et al., 2007). According to some previous scientific research, athletes go into depression, resort to banned substances, eating disorders, and low self-confidence appear, as a reason for suddenly leaving the sport. It has been shown that quitting sports can be a very challenging and complex process as it depends on various interpersonal, intrapersonal, structural and social factors. (Crane and Temple, 2015; Wilson et al., 2019). Facing the end of a career is a very sensitive phase that any elite athlete can face and which is the subject of interest and study by many authors in sports psychology (Battaglia et al., 2021; Crane and Temple, 2015; Diaz et al., 2018; Persson et al., 2020). With any of these ways of withdrawal that the athlete faces, the goal is to work on identifying the concept of accepting the new situation. Working or planning in advance and transferring sports skills to other areas of life will reduce the level of trauma from the end of the sports career. However, the question arises as to what are the most important factors that can cause the abandonment of a professional sports career and how the individual himself experiences them. Transitions are defined as a substantial shift in a person's life that forces them to modify their routines and behavior to meet their “new way” of living. (Van Houten et al., 2019).