Why Do Athletes Struggle With Life After Sports Planning?

Every single one of us knows our sporting career has an expiration date, yet so many of us reach retirement completely unprepared for what comes next. We train our bodies to peak performance, we study game footage until our eyes hurt, we perfect our craft down to the smallest detail. But when it comes to planning for life after sports, we often wing it.

Abiola Wabara's story shows us exactly why this approach doesn't work, and more importantly, what we can do about it.

How Do You Plan for Something You've Never Experienced?

I've spoken to hundreds of athletes on the 2ndwind podcast, and one pattern emerges again and again: the transition is harder than anyone expects. Abiola, who played professional basketball for 10 years across six countries, put it perfectly when she told me about her post-retirement reality.

"I spent my first year after my professional career driving Uber, selling artwork, working as a personal trainer while I was applying to jobs and doing interviews, just because I did not know what to do. I didn't know what I liked to do. And how do you find something else you love just as much as basketball? That's kind of hard to do."

Here was someone who had competed at the highest levels, who had navigated foreign countries and different cultures, who had shown incredible resilience throughout her career. Yet she found herself driving Uber at 3 AM while battling panic attacks, trying to figure out her next move.

Athletic success doesn't automatically translate into life planning skills. We're so focused on the immediate demands of our sport that the future feels abstract, distant, almost irrelevant. Until suddenly, it's not.

What Makes Life After Sports Planning So Difficult?

The sport gives us structure, purpose, and identity. When that disappears, we're not just changing careers, we're reconstructing our entire sense of self. As Abiola described: "That experience was really depressing. That's probably the first time I experienced depression also."

We develop incredible skills as athletes: resilience, teamwork, pressure management, goal setting. But translating those into corporate speak or finding industries that value them isn't intuitive. Abiola had a master's degree in international business management, but as she put it: "I'm really Googling, what do you do with international business management? Because I do not know."

Why Did Abiola's Approach Eventually Work?

What separated Abiola's transition wasn't luck or natural talent. It was intentionality. Even in her darkest moments, she was strategic.

"I was very strategic because I hate driving. I absolutely despise driving and I despise small talk and Uber is both. But I was very strategic because I will not drive at night. I only drive, pick hours when people go to work. So I will go to the business district and I will only drive there."

She kept her resume in the car. She targeted business professionals during commuter hours. She turned a survival job into a networking opportunity. That's the mindset shift that changes everything.

The real breakthrough came when she stopped treating her transition as a personal failure and started seeing it as a systemic problem. That realisation led her to create Global Life, a platform designed to help other athletes navigate this exact transition. She transformed her struggle into her mission.

What Can You Do Right Now to Plan for Life After Sports?

Based on Abiola's journey and the conversations I've had with dozens of athletes who've successfully navigated this transition, here are three steps you can take immediately:

Start exploring your interests while you're still playing. Abiola had art as her creative outlet throughout her career. It gave her something that was entirely hers, separate from basketball. What do you do when you're not training? What conversations energise you? These aren't random interests, they're clues to your next chapter.

Build relationships outside your sport before you need them. Abiola's breakthrough came through an Uber passenger who connected her with opportunities at Accenture. Start having coffee chats with people in industries that interest you. Join professional networks. The goal isn't to network aggressively, it's to understand what's out there and where you might fit.

Invest in yourself even when it's uncomfortable. Abiola chose education over a final payday, using her savings to fund a year and a half of living expenses while she earned her master's degree. That decision positioned her for everything that came after. What investment could you make in yourself right now? Additional qualifications, mentoring relationships, skill development courses.

Planning for life after sports isn't about having all the answers before you retire. It's about starting the conversation with yourself early enough that when transition time comes, you're not starting from zero.

If Abiola's story teaches us anything, it's that the same qualities that made you successful as an athlete can make you successful in whatever comes next. But only if you're intentional about the bridge between the two.