But now, if you're no longer playing a sport, it's like you're supposed to just work out to work out. To me, that feels really unsatisfying.

Before I was retired, I thought about this, and I remember having conversations with people about it, and I'm like, it's going to be easy. I'm conditioned to run and work out. I've always dedicated myself to that, and I've become kind of addicted to it. Well, as soon as I ended in November of 21, I had nothing left in my tank. I was completely

dead.

But that competitive drive, it never really goes away, does it? Soon after her retirement, a chance to be on a reality TV show came along for Carly. The premise of the show is that it drops celebrities into the middle of the desert, then tests their ability and endurance as they try and make it out. And that's how I launched that show, by the way. Anyway, the instant this offer came along, Carly's workouts

changed. It was amazing how my runs, my mileage pace, went from like eight and a half, nine minute mile pace. Start training for the show. I'm down at seven, seven, thirty mile pace. It's crazy that your brain, or at least my brain, when there's a goal and there's something in play that it just triggers your mind to just dig deeper. I spent a good month and a half really training for it, and it was nice to have a goal again.

It was nice to have a goal again. Interesting. What Carly is describing here isn't unique. A lot of people feel it. They need something to work for. I actually think this is one of the reasons that we've seen the rise of things like CrossFit. You're not working out to prepare for competition. The workout is the competition. I've flirted with CrossFit for this very reason. I got injured, of course. I've tried swimming and rowing and freaking peloton. Anything to try and give myself something to train for. I'll tell you what though. I'm not going to play golf. Oh God. Should I run a marathon? Please don't let that be the answer. Like you just go out there and

run?

Sure. For Carly, it helps to have something like the Special Forces show to light a fire under her workouts. But it's also clear that she's in a different phase. A phase focused on outcome more than process. On the joy of learning a new skill. On pushing her body and mind in new ways. Beat by beat.

Now I would say that in my younger years of my playing days, it was hard to enjoy the process. You're always kind of looking to the future. You're always wanting that goal of yours to happen. But as my career went on and the older I got and the more experience I had, I started to kind of embrace the process a little bit more. Enjoy the journey a little bit more and really try to immerse myself in that present moment.

It's only later in your career where you enjoy the process. You feel like you figured some things out. You're still learning. I feel like that also applies to across the board. You learn how to train better. You become more efficient. You just sort of are like, well, I guess what I'm saying is youth is wasted on the young, but it's kind of

like, oh, that that comes at the end. Yeah, I know what you're saying. It's almost like even in the soccer in the football world, if you could play till you were 40, 50, we'd be incredible players because you've learned the game so much and you're so much smarter. But obviously the body plays a role in that.

It all comes back to that stupid body, huh? Very, very frustrating. Youth really is wasted on the young or good knees are wasted on the young. All right, we got to snap out of it because there is a healthier approach out there. Starting with this, athletes are reframing how we think about retiring. Carly's doing it and so is Serena Williams. When she talked about the end of her tennis career, she didn't even use the word retirement. She called it evolution.

Yeah, I mean, I like the term she used. I think that it is an evolving next chapter. It's a weird, odd thing as a professional athlete to retire. I retired the same year that my parents retired in. It's odd to me. And I'm not really retired because I'm still working and doing other things. I need to grow. I need to evolve. I need to keep getting better and keep putting myself into uncomfortable positions because that's exactly what I did as a player.

All these things that make an athlete great, continually learning lessons, constant refinement, pushing yourself, may be their the answer to the what next

question.

It's hard to overstate how much the whole retiring on your own terms thing is really critical. Carly got to do that and it has helped her transition. She's also got a healthy mindset as you've learned. But for other athletes, as you're probably noticing for me, it can be much more abrupt. If injury forces you to grapple with what comes next before you're really ready to, it can feel more like a void, not a transition. When I've thought about the void left by the end of playing high-level sports, I've often thought, well, maybe I can just fill it with some other sport, some other athletic activity.