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Always an athlete / Jenné C. Blackburn
Edited by University Tennessee Press - 2023
"Always an athlete" is a comprehensive study of the ways in which athletes climb what author Jenné Blackburn terms “the mountain” — the journey from youth sports, through high school and college sports, to, finally, professional, and Olympic sports. This steady climb and success over a long period of time, however, sets up athletes for an inevitable fall off “the cliff” upon their retirement from competition. To help athletes in transition, the author identifies “three pillars of the cliff”— mental health, physical health, and athlete identity — and describes the issues that athletes have in each of these areas after they retire. After training, sacrificing, and devoting years, even decades, to a sport, athletes at every level will struggle within these three pillars. Blackburn believes that athletes must evolve from a competition mindset to a wellness mindset and match their new lifestyles in order to soften this transition into the real world.