Episode 6: From Structured to Self-Driven

In Episode 6 of The Locker Room, I talk about the difference between having structure and learning how to create it for yourself after sports. This episode explores routine, discipline, freedom, self-motivation, and the challenge of building a new rhythm when there is no coach, team, or schedule guiding you.

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, community, 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 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 how unprepared I was for life outside of sports. We talked about how preparation or the lack thereof can have a huge impact on what your transition looks like once sports are gone. We talked about the importance of building a life outside of sports while you're still in it, creating a routine, developing skills, building something that can benefit your long-term growth. Because the more you do that over time, the less devastating it is when you suddenly lose the structure that sports naturally provide. And that leads directly into the conversation for today. One thing I started realizing after sports ended is that having structure and creating structure are very different. In sports, you operate inside a system that tells you where to go, when to be there, how to do something, and what success and failure look like in both the short and long term. Outside sports, you have to create much more of that for yourself. Having a job makes it a little easier because you aren't required to rebuild an entire day from scratch. Certain hours are already spoken for. But everything outside of that becomes your responsibility. That's where being self-driven starts to matter. Being self-driven means identifying the areas of your life you want to improve, deciding what matters to you, and then creating a routine that helps you stay committed to those things. I didn't fully realize how important creating structure was until a few months after I graduated. By then, my work schedule had filled up more of my day because I was no longer an intern and I had more responsibility. So in that sense, structure was back. But it only came back for those specific hours. Everything else loosely revolved around that. I still didn't have a set schedule for when I would do anything else. And the hardest part was that I no longer had all the routines that used to be built around it. Everything changed. And because I didn't take those first weeks and months to establish a healthy rhythm for myself and adjust when work picked up, it became even harder to do after the fact. Having a routine you regularly adhere to creates boundaries in your life. If you know you have to be at the field or in the weight room at six in the morning, you go to sleep earlier at night, you get your stuff ready the night before, you plan around it. If you know you have to leave work every day at 4 p.m., then you make sure whatever you're doing before that wraps up in time. Those routines shape more than your day. They shape your habits, they shape your decisions, and in turn, they shape your life. So in this episode, I want to talk about the difference between living inside the structure that sports provide and learning how to build it for yourself once it's over. I want to talk about how qualities like consistency, persistence, discipline, and time management can either help or hurt athletes. And by the end of this episode, I want you to understand that after sports retirement, you have to find a way to motivate yourself. Life will eat you alive if you don't. You have to figure out what matters to you. And even if there were parts of sports you never liked, whether it was lifting, running, or eating right, I believe you should still strive to live a healthy and active life. That matters for your physical health and for your mental health. Not only that, but creating boundaries for yourself through everyday routines makes the transition into life after sports much smoother and much less of a headache. I think one of the strangest parts of the transition out of sports is that freedom sounds a lot better than it actually feels when you first get it. Because while you're playing, especially in college, so much of your life is structured for you. But in this research study on former college athletes, that was one of the big issues that came up. The athletes talked about how their highly scheduled lives in college created a major loss of structure and support once sports ended. The study also found that this transition hit even harder for athletes who did not have a clear plan for life after sports or a strong support system to lean on. That's exactly what happened to me. No more forced workouts, no more practice schedule. It was a relief to finally rest and be able to breathe, but if you're not careful, you start to drift. And that's where things start getting dangerous. Because once the structure of sports is gone, you have to figure out how to create a life that still has rhythm and boundaries without somebody else hurting you along. That's very difficult. The study talked about athletes having to learn how to set their own schedule, make their own lifestyle choices, decide what to eat, when they're exercise, and how to balance sleep, work, school, and life after sports. One former athlete in the study said, I need a little bit more routine and discipline in my life. Another talked about how much harder it became to stay motivated once it was up to them to create the schedule on their own. And I think that's one of the realest parts about this whole transition. While you're still in it, there's a system around you. There's accountability. And once it all disappears, you start finding out real quick whether you know how to lead yourself or whether you just knew how to function inside of that system. That's a hard truth. Because along with losing the game, a lot of us lost the routines that made us feel productive and purposeful, the support that made us feel connected, the pressure that made us stay sharp, and the structure that kept us moving. So now the question becomes, can I build that for myself? Can I create discipline without punishment? Can I stay active without competition? Can I take care of my body without needing to perform? Can I still live with purpose when there is no schedule being sent out and no coach or teammate waiting on me? That is what this stage is about. And I think that's why this part of the transition can be more frustrating than others. Because when freedom stops feeling free, you realize what you actually needed was not more space. You needed new structure, you needed new reasons. But unless I'm mistaken, that's not something athletes are taught how to recognize and build while they're still playing. That's why learning to become self-driven is so important. Once sports are gone, nobody can build your life for you anymore. And if you don't learn how to create a healthy standard for yourself, life can start to feel a lot more unstable than you ever expected. So let's talk a little bit about what kind of structure sports actually gave me every day. Because in college, the in season looked a lot different from the offseason. In the offseason, there were noticeably fewer practices, meetings, and lifts. Depending on how and when the postseason ended, that also affected how long the off-season was and how long coaches let players sit around before getting back involved in team or position group activities. That was true in football and track. But in season, it was a different story. We had regular early morning practices or lifts. We had meetings just about every day before practice. Practices usually lasted anywhere from an hour and a half to two and a half hours. Football was usually on the longer side of that, and track was somewhere in the middle depending on the day. Summer was a lot more intense for football. It's still technically preseason, but because the season is around the corner at the end of the summer, you're ramping up quite a bit. Track is a little different because if you're running track in the summer, then you're usually competing in some sort of national level event, so you won't be practicing too intensely. If we had early practice, I was at the door no later than 5.30 in the morning and not back in the house until around 9 or 10 at night. If we didn't have early practice, I might leave around 7 and still get back around the same time. So when you put together practices, meetings, lifts, personal workouts, classes, and competitions, you are easily talking about a minimum of 40 hours a week. And that's why I say most of my life was already structured for me. I knew when I needed to wake up and when I needed to go to sleep. I knew most days there would be practice, meetings, lifts, whatever. When I lived on campus, I knew the kinds of foods I needed to eat and avoid so my body could recover from that day and prepare for the next. When I left off campus, I had more variety, but that also meant I had more responsibility to stay disciplined and keep eating the right things. I didn't have much social time either. Whatever social time I could have had was time I spent getting in an extra workout, studying, or trying to recover. Literally everything else was class, practice, or work. Sports also forced me to develop habits over the years that I didn't always think of at the time. Like being early instead of just on time, getting my clothes or my bag ready the night before, going to sleep early enough to actually get good rest. It forced me to be disciplined about getting extra work in, studying enough to test well, and eating well so my body had the proper fuel. Time management was one of the biggest ones. I had to manage the little bit of time I had at the beginning, middle, and end of my day very wisely just to make sure I got everything done. Sports also built accountability into my life without me having to create much of it myself. You have coaches and teammates helping keep you on track and holding you to a team standard instead of expectations. You have a schedule full of events that you have to show up for physically and mentally. The fear of punishment is additional accountability. Not to mention, the competitive aspect keeps you accountable as well because you do not want to lose your spot and you want to put yourself in the best position possible. I definitely didn't realize what all that was doing for me until it was gone. I was doing those things because I wanted to be a good teammate and a good athlete. But I didn't realize practicing those habits gives you a foundation for how to live. It made it easier to work out and live a healthy lifestyle because I always wanted to stay in shape for competition. It made discipline come naturally because the structure was already there. Once that disappeared though, a lot of things felt different. I didn't feel as motivated to excel. There had been a certain standard built into me that I was accountable to, and now nobody was holding me accountable for what I ate, what I drank, whether I stayed in shape, whether I got my lifts in, or whether I was on time. Being on time started feeling more like an option than a rule. I didn't feel challenged to improve myself the same way. I didn't feel like my time was as valuable, so I didn't steward it properly. That was one of the first big signs that having structure and knowing how to create structure are not the same thing. That's where I started getting exposed for who I really was. Once I no longer had structure built into my life, I had to find out whether I was actually disciplined or whether I had just been living in an environment that strongly reinforces discipline. I realized pretty quickly that I was a product of my environment. It all changed the week after my last track meet. Once those texts about meetings and practices stopped coming through, I already knew what time it was. What I struggled with the most once I had to start building my own routine was managing my time wisely and being consistent. A key highlight of this time was that I started sleeping in more. And what I learned from that is that early morning workouts do more than just get the workout out of the way. They help get your motor running. They help you build momentum for the day. Instead of waking up and slowly getting yourself going, you're forced to get moving. And once you're up, you can get more done. When I started sleeping in, it took me much longer to get going. There were things I wanted to do. I wanted to work out. I wanted to study for different certifications. I wanted to keep progressing in different ways. But I just was not highly motivated to actually do those things. There was no urgency. And it took me a while to learn how to be consistent again. Even now, time management is a skill I'm constantly working on because it has to be adjusted depending on the season of life I'm in. I managed my time just enough to show up for work and do what I needed to do there. Outside of that, it depended on how the wind blew. Some days I get a lot done, some days I didn't. I'm naturally the kind of person who's given an inch and takes a mile. I've said it before and I'll say it again, for a long stretch after I graduated, I was playing the game way more than I felt like I ever had before. I wasn't working out consistently, I was sleeping in, I was probably staying up later than I needed to, and in the moment, it felt good to beat to my own drum. But the real question is, at what cost? Because later on, when it was time to lock back in and focus, it was incredibly hard to do. There were plenty of times I felt lazy, lost, overwhelmed, and obviously inconsistent, sometimes all at once. I could never really find the balance between my freedom and how to transition into adulthood and life outside of sports. Before that season of my life, I was never really the type to sit around and play the game all day, and definitely not for multiple days in a row. I usually had something to do or somewhere to go. But once sports was gone, I didn't really know what else to do. In hindsight, of course there were plenty of things I could have been doing. But as we talked about in the last episode, when you've been doing one thing for so long, you don't really know what to do when you can't do that one thing anymore. That is why you have to put your eggs in more than one basket. That is why you have to spread your identity across multiple areas of life. Because when you don't, once that one thing is gone, it feels like the whole foundation goes with it. And talking about putting your eggs in more than one basket, when I started working, my job exposed some weaknesses in me that sports had covered up for years. For example, I didn't do much emailing when I was playing sports. I didn't have to follow up with people a lot. I didn't do much coaching. Sure, teammates might ask for advice or critique every now and then, but most of the teaching and explaining came from the coaches. So when I became a personal trainer, I was honestly baffled at how weak some of those skills were for me. I was not good at explaining things, and that was uncomfortable. But the most uncomfortable part of all was becoming fully responsible for my own growth. Because now everything was on me. I had to take the extra effort for everything. You might get help here and there, but the bigger picture is still squarely on your shoulders. What made that so uncomfortable was not just knowing I was responsible for my success. It was knowing I was responsible for my failure. I couldn't say that I didn't know. I couldn't say that nobody taught me. If I didn't know, then the question became, why didn't you learn? Or why didn't you ask for help? Then comes some form of punishment, whether it's mild or harsh. That was a hard question to sit with for me. Because it forced me to realize that growth in this stage of life requires a different kind of discomfort. Not the discomfort of practice, of conditioning, of competition, the discomfort of self-leadership, self-motivation, and self-accountability. So once I realized that freedom was exposing a lot of things in me, the next question became, how do you actually start building structure for yourself instead of waiting for life to do it for you? The starting point was creating routines I could implement throughout my day, just small things that helped me create order again. I would start the day with stretching, then moved into some form of meditation, whether that was Bible study or journaling, and then I finished the morning with breakfast. Then, around lunchtime, I would try to get away from the gym for about an hour or so to eat, relax, and take my mind off work before the second half of the day. And at the end of the day, I would usually do some stretching again and catch up with my wife, filling her in on what went on with me. That helped me tremendously and became super impactful because they grounded me in the moment. They helped me stay present and control what I could control instead of constantly wondering why I no longer had the same triggers helping me stay disciplined or worrying about what my future would look like if I didn't figure it out soon enough. It helped me to actually live one day at a time. My faith, marriage, work, and training all played a role in helping me mature during that season too. It took time, but I really did grow a lot. A lot of different parts of my identity were being tested and refined, even though for a while it felt like I was failing most of the time. As a Christian, I knew my faith was being stretched every day, especially during the moments when I didn't always see light at the end of the tunnel, even though I knew it would come, and it did. As a married man, I was responsible for making sure my wife was provided for, and I had to learn how to place her needs above my own, even as I was figuring everything out. As a working man, I had to figure out how to be professional without losing my personality while also adapting to a new environment, a new culture, and new responsibilities. And as a former athlete, I wanted to make sure I stayed true to what I knew about myself, which was that I was still a man dedicated to the pursuit of bettering myself. I did not want disappointment, confusion, and loss to undo everything I had worked so hard to build, even if my sports career did not work out the way I wanted it to. And one of the biggest things I learned in that process is that being a disciplined athlete and being a disciplined non-athlete are not that different. Both require commitment, both require persistence, both require identifying goals and building systems that help you get there, and both require boundaries so you can stay focused on what matters. Discipline outside of sports just requires a different perspective. Back then, the part of me that was self-driven was usually driven by a specific goal. The more clear the goal was, the harder I worked. And if there was no goal, I might not work at all. But now, I'm more self-driven because the goal is to be the best version of myself every day. Even if there's not one huge goal right in front of me, and I still try to keep at least one, I know there are steps I need to take every day to become better than I was yesterday. There is always room for improvement. And if there wasn't, what would even be the point of living? So from one former athlete to another, if you're struggling to lead yourself, I would say this. If you want to eat an elephant, you have to do it one bite at a time. Take small, manageable steps. Identify a meaningful goal. Be specific. What does success look like? What does your future look like if you actually achieve that goal? Once you can answer that, you can start driving yourself in the right direction. Don't beat yourself up when you get it wrong, because every day is a new day. At the same time, maximize the opportunities you have and find ways to enjoy life while you're doing it. If I could go back, one thing I would start doing earlier is making certain habits easier to practice every day. I would find ways to make life easier for myself in the right ways. And that's not a bad thing. If reaching your goal feels impossible, every time you try, you are not going to stay motivated for long. But the more achievable it looks, the more likely you are to work to make it real. That's something I had to learn along the way. If there's one thing I want former athletes to understand, it's that sports can make discipline easy because so much of your life is already organized for you. You know where to be, you know when to be there, you know what's expected, and you know what happens if you don't meet expectations. But once it's over, all of that becomes your responsibility. And that is when you'll find out whether you are truly disciplined or just living in a disciplined environment. It's also important to understand that freedom is not always as good as it sounds when you're not ready for it. If you don't know how to manage your time, lead yourself, and build healthy routines, that freedom can work against you instead of for you. What I hope you take from this episode is that self-discipline after sports is possible. It just takes intention. It takes small, manageable routines, it takes meaningful goals, and it takes a willingness to lead yourself one day at a time, despite challenges, setbacks, failure, and sometimes a lack of desire. I want to leave you with this. It's gonna feel strange when nobody is telling you where to be, what to do, or what standards you need to meet. And if you've struggled to build structure for yourself since sports ended, that does not make you lazy or undisciplined. It just means you need to learn how to create for yourself what used to be provided for you. That is a process and it takes time. But it is possible. You can build routines that keep you grounded. You can create boundaries that help you stay focused. You can identify goals that matter to you and start taking daily steps toward them. You can become self-driven. And the more you learn how to do that, the more stable life after sports starts to feel. The more it starts to make sense, the more you can start to enjoy yourself again. Because discipline is still about commitment and choosing what matters and showing up for it consistently and persistently. The difference is that now it can only come from you. If this episode gave you something to think about, make sure you subscribe, leave a like, and comment your own experience below. I'd love to hear what routines have helped you the most and what this season of life has taught you about self discipline. And until next time, remember, the game changed, but your story is still being written. Take care and God bless.