lay on head

[breloom]

Anyone else dealing with post-athletic depression?

I was an athlete throughout child/teen/early adulthood, into my mid-20s. Then a series of physical and mental health challenges really forced me to step back from exercising at the level I used to. When COVID followed, I stopped being what I would describe as an "active" person.

Now, I'm 31, and getting back into exercise. But there's this looming shadow of my former self/body that seems to undermine any attempts to regain a sense of athleticism. I'm constantly reminded of strength, energy or stamina that I took for granted for most of my life. At my (admittedly still youngish) age it's hard for me not to think a lot of that is permanently lost. If I exercise (or not) and feel fatigued or weak, I get really down on myself, thinking I didn't earn it.

To be fair, I still *do* stuff. Yoga, walks, playing softball with friends, hiking. I even taught some younger friends how to weightlift so they could be more confident at the gym. That felt nice. However, I am struggling with holding myself to a former standard.

Any advice or parallels from y'all?

i definitely had trouble with my sense of ability vs where i actually was at when i started working out again after a big layoff at 30. the important thing is to keep the big picture in mind. even if you start from 0, retracing old ground after a long layoff means you'll reach a reasonable percentage of where you were within a few months, which in the lifetime you have a head of you, is a very short amount of time. we'll probably never hit the athletic highs, but strength and endurance can be built back up over time and you have the advantage of knowing the movements, so when a lot of new athletes hit a wall of needing technical improvement before they can continue their physical growth, you can keep going.

[brücke]

Anyone else dealing with post-athletic depression?

real, I ran xc and track basically until I hit 20 and started getting tons of joint injuries, ankles, knees, just like constant pain for a couple years. at this point I'm like mostly recovered from that, I still stay pretty active have an active job ride [redacted] go on long walks every day etc. but nothing really hits the same. used to just smoke weed about it but being sober it's rly hard to not have 6 runs a week to structure my life around. also was not fun to confront the like real physical limits that I have too. anyway it sucks lol thinking about getting into [redacted] racing or something to have something to train for, as it stands I've mostly been trying to learn guitar?

[skunk ape]

I peaked in college as a D3 athlete. Never being good enough probably helped a lot, but I took a break for a couple of years, then returned as a coach/athlete when I felt like it for a social-ish adult team and frankly, not performing at the level I used to only bothered me as far as I didn't think about how much time and sacrifice went into getting to where I was. I simply don't want to do that again.

In the meantime, I picked up the sports I enjoyed but suck ass at, and, perfectly content with the knowledge of how much time would have to go into it to make me competitive, I putter along happily without the burden of success.