Episode 3: The Silence Nobody Talks About

In Episode 3 of The Locker Room, I talk about the silence that comes after sports. This episode explores processing what it reveals and how to begin finding clarity outside of the game.


The Locker Room is a podcast for former athletes navigating the confusing and often painful transition from a life centered around sports to a life outside of the game. For many athletes, walking away from sports is more than the end of a season. It can feel like losing purpose and even a piece of who you are. One day, your life is built around competition and performance. Then suddenly, it's not. No schedule. No team. No goals. No clear version of who you are supposed to become next. This podcast explores the emotional weight of that transition: the identity crisis, the anxiety, the depression, the feeling of being lost, and the pressure to “move on” before you have fully processed what you left behind. Through honest conversations, personal reflection, and relatable stories, The Locker Room creates space for former athletes to feel seen, understood, and reminded that they are not alone. Life after sports is not just about finding a new career or routine. It is about rediscovering purpose, rebuilding identity, and learning that who you are has always been bigger than what you did. 

Transcript

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What's up y'all? It's your boy Jalen and welcome or welcome back to the Locker Room Podcast. In the last episode, we talked about the moment it starts to settle in that your sports career has come to an end. We talked about how the transition out of sports into regular life takes time. But for me, it started with the realization that there was no next season to prepare for. No off-season training plan, no team calendar, no group chats. And that's when it hit me. This wasn't just a break. This was real life. Today I want to talk about the silence that comes after sports. Because when you're an athlete, your life is loud in so many ways. There's the physical noise, the whistles, the yelling, the buzzers, the play calls, the weights clanging, the sneakers squeaking, the teammates laughing, the trash talk, the constant movement. There's the mental noise. Your mind is constantly working even when you don't realize it. You're reading, reacting, adjusting, anticipating, and making decisions in a split second under pressure. There's the emotional noise, the encouragement, the coaching, the criticism, the peace that comes after a good performance, the anger after a bad one, the frustration when your body doesn't feel right, the confidence when everything clicks, the pressure when people are depending on you. And then there's the social noise, the conversations during practice, the jokes in the locker room, the random group chat messages, the bus rides to and from competitions. Even if you're not the most social person, you're constantly around other people. All of that becomes a normal part of who you are and something you might not even be aware enough to describe until it's gone. I think most former athletes understand that silence immediately, even if they don't have the words for it. Because when your sport comes to an end, the absence is obvious. Even if you're still in school, even if you're working, even if you have other things to do, there may not be a hole in your schedule, but there is definitely a hole in your life. For me, it was the summer after I graduated. The internship I had converted into a job, but I would only work about three to five hours a day. So outside of that, I had a lot of time on my hands. And when I think back on that season of my life, I was playing the game a lot. It's crazy thinking about it now because I can't even say for sure whether it was for weeks or months before I realized what was happening. But what I do know is that I wasn't working out much. I wasn't around many people except my wife. I wasn't really going anywhere. I wasn't doing much of anything because in my mind, there was nothing to prepare for. And I know that probably made it worse, but to me, in that moment, there was nothing else to do. I was completely lost. That's when the silence started to get even louder. I'm also what you can call a social introvert. I like being around other people I enjoy, but I also love being at home and having my own space. So at first, I was fine because being home didn't feel unnatural to me. But there's a big difference between choosing quiet and being forced into quiet. At the same time, I was happy to have my own space, it was quickly overwhelmed with the realization that the environment I was a part of for years was gone. Being around teammates, coaches, practices, and competitions nearly every day for months at a time, for 15 years of my life, to not being around any of that anymore was tough to say the least. Saying there was a lot of silence is an understatement. Like I said before, I had a lot of free time. Since school was out, my schedule became more open than it had ever been, and my days slowed way down. But my life seemed to slow down too. My life got quieter. My body wasn't being challenged in the same way, and neither was my mind. I wasn't being forced to process information in the same way. My emotions didn't have the same outlet. My social life shifted dramatically. My routine and identity fell off a cliff. The most difficult thing I dealt with was a social aspect. Because a lot of my social life was built into the sports I played, there were almost no built-in interactions on a daily basis for me. Learning how to manage the silence after is another one of the hardest parts of the transition from a life in sport to a life outside of it because you're dealing with a complex, multifaceted issue all at once. How would you even be able to pinpoint the issue if you don't recognize that? By the end of this episode, I want you to be able to identify the type of silence that has impacted your life the most. You're not weak because the quiet feels too heavy, and you're not immature because part of you misses that noise. That silence is real, but if we can name it, we can start learning how to deal with it. In an article written by Dr. Paul McCarthy, a sports psychologist, he says this. Studies show that 46.4% of athletes experience mental health issues after retiring, including depression at 27.2% and anxiety at 26%. After all, the average elite athlete trains six hours daily, six days a week, leaving minimal time for exploring other interests or developing career plans. Additionally, research indicates that athletes with strong athletic identities typically face more severe psychological difficulties when transitioning out of sports. I don't think those numbers are as surprising as they may sound. I think so many former athletes struggle mentally after sports for one simple reason. We do not know how to live without it. Some of our entire lives have been consumed with competition and training for days upon days for years at a time. And for a long time, it never stops. Sports are not just something you do, they become the environment that teaches you how to live and who you are. They give you a place to vent and regulate extreme emotions. They teach you how to fit into a team dynamic and figure out what you bring to the group. They force you to deal with failure, success, pressure, and feedback over and over again. They surround you with people who have similar goals, similar routines, and similar motivations. And after enough time, all of that starts shaping more than just your habits. It starts shaping your identity. You begin to see yourself a certain way, maybe as a winner, maybe as a hard worker, maybe as somebody who's cultivatable, dependable, disciplined, competitive, or driven. Your confidence gets built inside of that world. Your reputation gets built there too. So when sports ends, you are not just losing competition. You are losing an entire world that constantly gave you feedback about who you were and where you stood among your peers. Nearly half of us former athletes are experiencing mental health issues after retiring because life outside of sports usually does not replace those things. And if it does, it's not right away. It moves much slower. In the real world, competition looks a little bit different. Teamwork isn't always valued the same way. Athletic ability usually doesn't directly serve you or anyone else anymore. Not to mention, if you didn't prepare with strong grades, connections, or another clear direction for your future, the struggle can become even more real because now your livelihood is tied up in that transition as well. So when all of that disappears, that's when the silence shows up. And silence is technically defined as the absence of sound, but functionally, let's define it as the absence of. The absence of structure, of daily challenge, of built-in social connection, the absence of the version of yourself that made the most sense for years. For me, that silence showed up when I became the new guy. It showed up when I had to learn new skills, refine old ones, and accept that the world I came from no longer mattered in the world I was entering. It showed up when I started reminiscing about my career and thinking about what could have been. It showed up in anxiety about the past, anxiety about the future, and in moments where I honestly wondered whether my life outside of sports will be anything more than average, and if it was even worth living. But that silence revealed something important. It revealed that I needed to talk to somebody much earlier than I did, that I needed another outlet, another environment where I could keep using some of the same traits sports had sharpened in me, because without that, I was suffering in silence. That reveals another difficult part of this transition. The hard part isn't usually being in the moment dealing with that last sporting event. The hard part is having to reflect on and deal with what the silence reveals about you once that event is over. So now let's look back at what actually changed in my life. Before I could even understand what the silence was doing to me mentally or emotionally, I had to notice what had actually gotten quiet. I had to notice where my life had gotten quiet. The first thing I noticed was the loss of rhythm in my everyday life. I was used to waking up about 60 to 90 minutes before my day really started. I was used to moving from class to the library, to lunch, to another class, to practice, to work, and back home consistently every day. I was used to going to the weight room in the track at least three times a week for both voluntary and mandatory workouts. I was used to the smell of the locker room, the routine of throwing practice clothes into bin so they could be washed and ready again by the next day. About 90% of that stopped after my last track meet and probably 99% after graduation. It caught me off guard because I didn't think I would miss that. I didn't realize how much I would miss the constant communication between teammates and coaches. I didn't realize I would miss the meetings. Those moments where coach would talk to us, ask us questions, challenge us to speak up, or make us think about things bigger than the current moment. I didn't even realize how much I would miss game days. The atmosphere was different, the attitude was different. Everybody going through their own pregame ritual and locking in. That kind of environment does something to you over time. Even practice, which I definitely complained about and sometimes dreaded depending on the workout or what kind of mood my coach was in. It became part of the rhythm of my life in a way I did not fully appreciate until it was gone. One moment that revealed how real it was about to get was when I started seeing the seniors leave the group chats one by one until eventually it was my turn too. That was one of the moments that probably doesn't sound like much, but for me, it was one more reminder that a chapter of my life was ending and I couldn't do anything about it. Back then, a normal day didn't really feel normal. Living the life of a regular student for the first time, even for just a month, felt odd because for so long there had always been another layer to my day. Once I started noticing where my life had gotten quiet, the next thing I had to deal with was what it was doing to me. Because at first, it just felt like a change of pace. But as time went on, it started to feel like something heavier and I did not know what to do with myself. I wish I could say I wasn't thinking about all the things I could have done better, but I was. I thought about all the moments I didn't seize, all the opportunities I had to ask for help and didn't. All the little things that feel small when you're in it, but get so much louder, so much more prominent once it's over. I was very anxious during the season of my life. I replayed moments over and over in my head. It was exhausting. It was heavy. I was lonely. And I say that because being lonely is not the same as being alone. Being lonely is an emotional state of feeling disconnected, unseen, or isolated. It felt like my mind finally had too much room to wander. And I think that's another big reason why I started playing the game so much. Not just because I was bored, but because I was trying to numb my mind from thinking about everything so constantly. I just wanted to run away from my own thoughts. If I'm really being honest looking back, I think a lot of this came from the rush of emotions I had been too busy to fully process while I was still in sports, and they were finally starting to come out. And that's the thing. As long as you're still in it, there's always something in front of you. You don't have that much time to be focused on how you feel about something you did or didn't do. You may go over in film or a meeting and maybe a little bit at practice, but for the most part, that gets quickly breaked, and then it's time to start focusing on whatever is next. So once that environment is gone, you're left alone with every single thing that has built up over the years. That's a lot of time for things to be bottled up. It also hurt that I believed I was having an original experience. I never would have guessed anyone else could be living the same experience I was having. I knew that I had teammates who didn't accomplish everything they wanted that season either, but I still could not let myself believe anybody really understood the way I felt. I was the one who fell short. I was the odd man out. I became extremely self-conscious about that. I talked to my wife and we went through it a little bit, but she couldn't relate to most of it. And as for opening up to my friends or my teammates about it, that was definitely not happening back then. No shot at all. So I was carrying everything internally, and that made the silence even louder. Because when you don't talk about what you're carrying, you enter this relentless feedback loop. You're in an echo chamber. That led to feeling purposeless. At the time, I didn't really know how to explain that, but I lacked direction. I lacked guidance. I had a job, but there was no next for me. That's a hard feeling to sit with when you dreamed about playing professional sports since childhood. Even if that's statistically unrealistic, when you spend years inside of that world getting constant feedback from yourself, your teammates, your family, your coaches, it can lull you into believing that is where your life is headed. Which isn't a bad thing, but it makes it hard to imagine life outside of it. So when that path ends, you're left trying to answer a question you never really prepared for. Now what? That's what made the silence so difficult for me mentally. That season of silence gave every unresolved thought, every regret, every fear, and every unanswered question room to breathe. Once all that was forced to the surface, the next question became, what do you do with it? Because at first I tried to ignore it. I tried to block it out by distracting myself and hoping it would eventually go away on its own. And it seemed to work in some moments. But just about every day, there were moments when it would creep back up. Sometimes it would last for a few seconds, sometimes a few minutes. But in some of those moments, the silence would get so loud it was hard to think about anything else. My heart would start pounding out of my chest, and I would literally have to remind myself to breathe and force myself to think about something else, something positive. That was tough, but I realized just because I found a distraction doesn't mean I found peace. Unsurprisingly, one of the first things that actually helped was getting back into some type of routine. I knew I needed to start working out again, so I did. But even that felt awkward at first because I didn't really know where to start. Do I train like I'm still running track? Do I train like a regular gym goer? Do I pick up where I left off? Or do I go back to the foundation? I didn't really know, but I knew I needed a rhythm again. Whatever I decided, I just started doing a little here and there at the gym I worked at, and that mattered more than having the perfect plan. Because when you're in a season like that, sometimes the most important thing is not doing everything right. It's just doing something and being consistent. I still deal with the silence. I just deal with it differently now. Now I use my athletic ability, my job to be excellent, and the mindset of a high performer and apply that to other areas of my life that still require me to show up at a high level. Every lesson learned in sports can be applied to life outside of it. I know that's cliche, and at first it doesn't seem that way, but it's true. The discipline, the resilience, the ability to grind and push through discomfort, none of that has to die just because sports ended. You have to be an active participant in your development. You can't just wait for life to come to you. You've got to go to it. There's a quote by a man named Victor Frankel that says, when we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves. That's what this season was teaching me, even if I didn't fully understand it at the time. If there's one thing I wish every athlete knew before their last game, it's that we're never meant to define ourselves only by what we do in sports, not by what you did on the field, the court, the track, or in the weight room. The silence can feel so heavy because it forces you to sit with who you are when the routines, the recognition, and the role you carried for so long are no longer there in the same way. But over time, I've started to realize that who I am was never supposed to begin and end with performance. Who I am is defined by the work I put in over time, by the discipline I carry, by the habits I build, and by the consistency I live with long after the spotlight is gone. Whoever you are, when you calculate that, is what matters. Because the game may stop, but the person you're becoming doesn't have to. I want to leave you with this. When a rhythm that has shaped your life for years suddenly disappears, of course things are gonna feel off. That's why I believe the sooner you can find a healthy routine for yourself, the better. It doesn't have to be perfect and it doesn't have to look exactly what your life used to be, but it does need to be something you can consistently show up for. Also, you'd probably be surprised at how exciting it can be to find another hobby or another sport where you get to be the beginner again. There's something powerful about learning something new, developing new skills, discovering new solutions, and proving to yourself that growth didn't stop just because one chapter ended. The silence can feel overwhelming at times, but it can still be useful. Those quiet moments can become some of the most important moments for your future because they can give you clarity. Because if you can hear, you can think. If you can think, you can plan. If you can plan, you can see. And if you can see, you can take a step toward a better future outside of sports. If you got value from this, make sure you subscribe, leave a like, and comment your own experience below. I'd love to hear what your silent season was like and what you're still working through. Until next time, remember the game changed, but your story is still being written. Take care and God bless.