Exercise and Well-Being after High-Performance Sport: Post-Retirement Perspectives

Exercise and Well-Being after High-Performance Sport explores whether high-performance athletes have healthy and prosperous relationships with exercise and well-being after retirement from elite sports. This edited collection is the first of its kind to bring together sociologically informed accounts from former high-performance athletes about their retirement experiences and post-sporting careers.

The chapters combine creative narrative writing and social theory to frame the experiences of exercise and well-being after retirement from high-performance sport. Written by former high-performance athletes who are now socio-cultural sports scholars, the authors explore how retiring from elite sport impacted their relationship to exercise and physical activity, identity, and long-term mental health.

This book is key reading for graduate and postgraduate students, as well as academics and researchers interested in sports retirement experiences, sport sociology, mental health, and well-being.

Luke Jones is a lecturer in sport coaching at the University of Bath, UK, and a former youth international and semi-professional footballer. Luke’s doctoral research and subsequent research programme has focused upon exploring retirement from sport using a socio-cultural perspective, including how former athletes relate to their own exercise.

Zoë Avner is a lecturer in sports coaching at Deakin University, Australia, and a former French youth international and semi-professional footballer. Her research draws on post-structuralist and feminist methodologies to explore athlete and coach learning, power and coaching, and coaching ethics.

Jim Denison is a former NCAA Division I middle-distance runner who also competed internationally following his university career. He is a professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation at the University of Alberta, Canada. A sport sociologist and coach educator, his research examines the formation of coaches’ practices through a post-structuralist lens.