Exercise and Well-Being after High-Performance Sport explores whether high-performance athletes have healthy and prosperous relationships with exercise and wellbeing 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 wellbeing 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 wellbeing.
About the Author: 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 focussed upon exploring retirement from sport using a socio-cultural perspective including how former athletes relate to their own exercise.
Zoë Avner is a Senior Lecturer in Sports Coaching at Northumbria University, UK and a former French youth international and semi-professional footballer. Her research draws on poststructuralist 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.
