Five things the UKSI Performance Lifestyle team wants all athletes to consider ahead of their transition from their sport

This article was first published by Leaders in Sport

When athletes transition away from Great Britain’s World Class Programmes, they share common – but often unspoken – questions, hopes and worries that extend beyond their personal circumstances.

“A retired athlete might say ‘I thought I was the only one who couldn’t watch the next Olympics or Paralympics after I retired because it was just too painful’ or ‘I thought I was the only one who struggled with how my body and physical identity changed’,” says Emma Groome, Futures and Senior Performance Lifestyle Coach at the UKSI.

“But they’re not alone,” she continues. “Many athletes have been in their sport for years and years and they can say ‘can I ask you a question: is it normal to think this?’ You’re like ‘yeah, totally. We hear that a lot’.”

The UKSI Performance Lifestyle team numbers 38 staff members currently. “Every sport in receipt of World Class Programme funding from UK Sport is able to access core Performance Lifestyle services and some sports have chosen to invest further beyond their core allocation,” says Dawn Airton, the UKSI’s Futures Lead and Senior Performance Lifestyle Coach, who has joined Groome to speak to the Leaders Performance Institute.

“We’re one of the largest practitioner teams in the Institute,” adds Groome. “It’s quite impressive compared to where we started.”

Previously, athletes could receive support for up to six months after they had left a World Class Programme [WCP]. From athletes sharing their experiences, Groome and Airton realised that a change was needed, successfully pushing for this support to be extended for up to two years.

“It just didn’t feel long enough to provide that duty of care for athletes while they’re still coming to terms with those practical, emotional and physical changes that all athletes go through,” says Airton. “They need more time to make sense of their sporting journey and experiences and ask themselves: ‘what does my next chapter look like? Where am I going to thrive?’ Or even ‘who am I?’”

Airton and Groome have worked together on developing the Performance Lifestyle team’s support to athletes as they transition away from a WCP.

Here are five factors they want all British athletes on a World Class Programme to consider about the transition support services on offer at the UKSI.

1. It is now for two years and not just for retiring athletes

The UKSI Performance Lifestyle team will be there for an athlete and their holistic needs as they journey in, through and beyond elite sport. “It’s really important for athletes to know and to feel that the support is there for them, no matter their circumstances and, crucially, they can access this for two years after they leave a WCP,” says Groome. It could be that a programme has had its funding cut. Maybe an athlete has been deselected. It could even be that they have made the decision to turn professional, as is the case in a number of sports. Entering a WCP entails a number of choices on the part of the athlete and is a major transition in itself. “More often than not, athletes make the choice to move to an elite sports training environment to receive the best training, coaching and support services in the world. What that means is they often have to move home, move away from family and friends and the social and emotional support mechanisms they had in place’. Change and transition is part of every athlete’s journey, we are there to help them understand and manage those changes.” adds Airton.

2. Performance Lifestyle support is holistic and collaborative

The UKSI Performance Lifestyle team will support athletes throughout their time on a WCP and for up to two years afterwards across six ‘pillars’. They are: transitions, mental health & wellbeing, career development, financial health, learning & development, and education. “During and beyond their time on a World Class Programme, we’re supporting our athletes through change,” says Groome. “They’re going from being a funded athlete to not being a funded athlete and that brings them potential change and gives them decisions to make. What do they do next, practically-speaking? Do they need a job? Is this a transition into their next career? Is this the point at which they are going to self-fund? They may need to relocate and their income may be different.” In addition to these ‘external’ considerations come a range of ‘internal’ factors. “We’re talking in terms of their identity; who they are,” Groome continues. “One of the things we hear is what should a former athlete say when someone asks ‘what do you do?’ They tell us ‘I don’t know what to say anymore.”

It is paramount for the Performance Lifestyle team to raise the awareness of their work with current and former athletes, including those eligible athletes that may have left the high performance community. “We’re working closely with UK Sport and the British Elite Athletes Association [BEAA], who are developing an alumni community of athletes who have transitioned from a World Class Programme.” Support available to athletes includes access to the UK Sport-funded and UKSI-facilitated Personal Development Award, which assists athletes with personal and professional development; access to Health Assured, a free health and wellbeing provider who offer help with issues from legal advice through to counselling; and the BEAA alumni app. Airton says: “We want athletes to know that more support than ever before is available and it’s OK to ask for trusted and individualised help and support – people are genuinely there who want to help you with whatever that transition means for you.”

3. It is not one size fits all

The Performance Lifestyle team have tried to make things as simple as possible for transitioning athletes by identifying five areas where they focus their support: ‘understanding change’, ‘understanding self’, ‘understanding the world’, ‘making it happen’, and then ‘review’. “It’s not sequential or absolute that you have to progress through all of those areas, but they’re recurring themes in our conversations with athletes,” says Groome. “With ‘understanding change’, for example, we might come back to financial or professional development. ‘Understanding self’ is often linked to the athlete reconnecting with who they were or connecting with who they are now. This might be around discovering your strengths, values and passions or exploring the timeline of your life and career to this point.”

Athletes will engage with these support services to differing extents and may not engage with some elements at all. “It’s ‘the path of a meandering river’ as one of our Olympians described it to us recently,” says Airton. “It was the journey they’d been on to this point and how it aligns to their strengths, values, who they are as a person, the support mechanisms and the people who have got them through those experiences.”

The priority differs from athlete to athlete. “If it’s finding a job you would hone in on that,” says Groome, “but it could be the emotional component because no practical or sensible decision-making can be made at that time.

4. Performance Lifestyle can help you rediscover your purpose in a time of uncertainty

The removal of an athlete’s routine can be a major source of disorientation. “There was a gold medal-winning athlete I had worked with who had actually done a lot of planning ahead of their retirement and they told me ‘I turned the page in my diary and the page was blank’ – and that was the best-prepared athlete,” says Groome. “Normally, your structure is based around your training. More often than not, that determines when you go home, when you go on your holidays, all of those things. When you take away the reason for that structure it is something that Dawn and I find we have to support athletes with – without it, the impact on mental health can be significant. The Performance Lifestyle team witness snapshots of how athletes feel and they can share those insights with others in transition. “Athletes say it’s so good that another athlete felt like that,” Groome adds.

While an athlete cannot plan everything, there are elements from their athletic career that will aid their transition, as Groome explains. “They have a lot of these strengths and skills and they can apply elements of how they’d plan their performance, to problem-solve it, being resourceful, being creative.”

“They understand the uncertainty. Uncertainty is a big part of sport and any transition,” adds Airton, “but even just feeling like you’re taking action towards something has a big impact, I’ve found. The athletes we support have said ‘If I’m taking action, in my week, in my month, I feel I’m really making progress’ and we can then reflect on and review the progress being made. We do a lot of reflective practice over that two-year period to outline what you have understood about yourself, what you have achieved, and we highlight the strengths that people have.”

5. Planning your transition can help your performance

The growing reputation of the Performance Lifestyle team is down to its advocates, who all see the performance benefits. “We’ve got a lot of advocates across the performance directors, coaches, wider UKSI support teams and colleagues at UK Sport and the BEAA. This really is a system-wide approach to supporting athletes,” says Groome. “A colleague might say ‘I’ve got an athlete who could really do with having something else and I’ve sent them your way’. These advocates in the system help promote the belief that it helps rather than hinders your performance. Often that’s the hook for athletes who would not want to invest their time in something that doesn’t help their performance.”

If you are, work with, or know an Olympic or Paralympic athlete who is on a World Class Programme, or has left a World Class Programme in the past two years, contact PL.Futures@uksportsinstitute.co.uk for more information on the support available.