Lecture 10 - Termination Flashcards
(27 cards)
How can retirement bring multiple stressors?
Not clear cut what will happen
- fear of the unkown
- dont know if you will be okay
How can retirement cause interpersonal and relationship issues?
- Team mates are no longer there
- May lose friends as they were fake
- Family may not cope if you stopped - they dont like it and dont financially have enough
Define Pt 1
Expected and planned retirement
- grieving process likely
- its a process you build up to
Define PT 2
Career ends unexpectingly
- injury, dropped of team
- Potential for PTSD/ trauma
- cannot plan for this form
Define career termination
Previous definition for retirement
- seen as just an end point, final game, final championship etc
- When they stop participating in their chosen sport
Define career transition
More beneficial to define retirement as a transition phase, not an end point
- helps them plan, and you can support them through it easier
- The process of moving from participation in competitive sport to a post-athletic career as a consequence of athletic career termination
What are some of the issues that retirement can bring about?
- Loneliness
- Depression
- Alcohol and drug abuse
- Financial adjustment
- Occupational Adjustment
- Losing friends - social networks change, need to adjust. Team mates and coaches carry on but you dont
- No qualifications to fall back on
Outline the critical period of retirement
After London 2012, 16% of Uk athletes retired
- 60/300 retired
- 20/30 more were considering it
- build up to olympics, an SP needs to be planning for lots of athletes retiring. But they are so focused on the olympics, so not a lot of stuff you can do in the build up
- they cant work on future plans as too busy with olympic training
Outline Social Gerontology as a theoretical perspective on retiring
- Gerontology is about ageing
- Take this perspective and try and fit it onto athletic retirement, but doesnt really work like that
- Shows how people normally retire around 65
- and then stop working immediately
- looks at social components
Why cant social gerontology apply to sport?
Athletes retire so much younger, at like 30
- they often carry on working and change roles
- dont always need to make huge life adjustments, especially if not that succesful.
Outline Thanatology as a theoretical perspective on retiring
- The study of death
- The processes of death, and thinking about death are quite applicable to sport retirement
Outline Kubler-Ross (1969)
Interviewed terminal cancer patients and plotted the typical progression of coming to terms with it all
- Denial and Isolation (im not going to die)
- Anger
- Bargaining - if religious, pray to God, if i do this, please dont let me die
- Depressive symptoms
- Hopefully then comes: Acceptance
How can Thanatology apply to sport contexts?
- if it’s termination 1, then lots of the language athletes use is metaphors surrounding death - i will mourn the end of my career
- Start with denial (i can still play, ill come back from this)
- Anger
- Bargaining, if i started early with gymnasticis i can play football for longer?
- Depressive symptoms - after internalising it
- Acceptance hopefully
Outline Schlossberg’s (1981) Model of Human Adaptation to Transition as a theoretical perspective
3 elements for the SP to focus on when helping a transition period
Provides 3 elements for the SP to focus on when helping a transition period
- Perceptions of the transition (levels of stress) - as it is a future event, it is stressful as athletes dont think they have the resources to cope with it
- Characteristics of the individual (e.g. age) - Are they old to be retiring? Are they resilient? are they fragile?
- Characteristics of the pre- and post- transitional Environment (e.g. levels of support) - do they have social support, educational workshops etc
- Once this stuff is in place, they are prepared to succesfully transition
Outline the succesful adjustment model
Argues 3 things are required for sucessful transition
- Coping strategies
- Reasons for retirement
- Athletic Identity
Outline Athletic identity as a requirement for succesful transition
Most of your identity is surrounding being an athlete, so when you retire, a large whole of your identity is missing. Having a much more varied identity is important for a succesful transition
Outline Lally (2007) study into athletic identity, What problems did they have? Fearful of retiring, how?
Interviewed gymnasts who were approaching retirement, identified them as having these problems:
- Anticipation of crisis and diminished identity
- stressed about the uncertain upcoming events
- They did a natural coping strategy - tried to diminish their athletic identity - trying to find components of their identity outside of athletics
When they actually went through retirement, they didn’t have a crisis. Shows its normal to anticipate a crisis, and no disrupted identity
Define Coping resources in succesful transition
- Cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage external or internal demands/ conflicts, that you see as exceeding your resources
- Stuff you do to cope with stressful things you see you cannot cope with
- There are millions of coping strategies to cope with retirement
What was Lazarus & Folkman, 1984 definition of Coping resources in succesful transition
A process of constantly changing cognitive and behavioural efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands or conflicts as appraised as taxing or exceeding one’s resources
Give exampls of some coping strategies
**
- Diminishing athletic identity - Finding other things to focus on - but hard if they are full time competing. Have to get them to refocus/ add things to their identity
- Achieve all sport related goals, so you can retire happy
- Having previous experience with transitions, like moving to an elite training camp
- Get a new role in your sport - media/ coaching
- Possession and awareness of transferable skills - e.g. leadership, communication etc. Can use this in other occupations. Make them aware/ teach them new ones
Give more examples of coping strategies
- New focus after termination - e.g. strictly come dancing
- Pre-transition planning - SP can help them prepare, this is how to get jobs, this is what its going to be like. E.g Gary linekar. Coaching training whilst performing
- Social support - most effective informal strategy - do you have a network available to you? or will you be lonely? Will you lose them after retiring?
- Lots more transition support available now over past few years - cant just wave them off and say good luck
Give examples of transition support we have in the UK
*****
- Support Zone
- Discovery Zone
- Employer zone
- Workshops
- build CV, learn job application skills, meet employers etc etc
Outline reasons for terminating your career
4 things
- how psychologically demanding is it
- Forced retirement - dropped from team, loss of funding
- quite psychologically challenging - Age
- either have won everything, or just lost fitness/ energy, just too old - Injury
- one major one that rules you out for ever
- or a niggling one that never gets better for long
- Very psychologically challenging, especially if it keeps niggling and never really gets better. It gets better then worse - Voluntary
- Plan to retire - least psychologically challenging
- just dont want to do it anymore, plan to retire after olympics
- could be a relief
Outline Kristina Vogel
Double olympic champion, 9 time world champion
- paralysed in a crash
- Extreme adjustment and extreme form of termination
- Social and occupational adjusment
- as well as coming to terms with being disabled
- big psychological issues for her and those around her
