In May 2024, Japanese figure skater Shoma Uno walked away from competitive sport at 26 years old. He'd just won back-to-back world championships. He held three Olympic medals. By every conventional measure, he was at his peak.
"During the last one to two years, there were times I struggled with my own skating as an active competitor," Uno told reporters at his retirement press conference. "I couldn't easily decide to quit because, at times, I reached extremes."
The decision to retire, he said, had been forming for two years: gradual, confusing, impossible to name until it became impossible to ignore.
This pattern repeats itself across elite athletics with striking consistency. Olympic soccer star Alex Morgan announced her retirement at 35 after what she described as a year that was "difficult mentally, physically with injuries." She knew at the beginning of 2024 that it would be her final season. "I felt in my heart and soul," she said in her retirement video. Not her mind. Her heart and soul.
The body announces transitions before the mind can articulate them. For Olympic athletes, this compression happens faster and more visibly than in most professional contexts, but the underlying pattern remains identical: physical rebellion precedes conscious understanding.
I've spent 20 years working with high-achieving professionals navigating major transitions. Over 500 coaching relationships across 31 countries. The pattern holds whether you're a figure skater at 26, a tech executive at 42, or an entrepreneur mother at 38 building your third company.
Your body knows you've outgrown the container before your mind is ready to let go.
An analysis of career performance data for every track and field athlete who competed in individual events at the Olympics from 1996 through 2020 found that athletes peak around age 27, with performance declining afterward.
But here's what the data doesn't capture: what it feels like in your body when you're still performing at an elite level but can no longer sustain the cost.
Shoma Uno described reaching "extremes" during his final competitive years. Alex Morgan said she "felt like the last couple of weeks I sort of lost a step in playing." Not performance metrics. Physical sensation. The body withdrawing cooperation even when technical skill remained intact.
Athletes in this dissolution period experience what researchers call a "liminal phase": feeling caught between their former athletic identity and a future identity they cannot yet see. The body enters this threshold space first.
Common barriers to smooth athletic retirement include high athletic identity, perfectionism, involuntary retirement, and lack of coping strategies. What the categories describe clinically, the athletes experience as visceral: inability to actuate, procrastination despite high motivation, fatigue that rest doesn't cure, injuries requiring serious attention.
The inability to actuate. That's the phrase that matters.
I've tracked this pattern across hundreds of professionals in career transitions. The body's rebellion follows a predictable progression, though the timeline varies dramatically based on self-awareness and personality patterns.
Stage 1: Loss of Drive
You don't have the get up and go anymore. You've lost your fire, your will. The motivation that used to be automatic now requires conscious effort to manufacture. You think maybe you're just tired, or getting older, or need a vacation.
But the vacation doesn't help. The inner reserves you could always count on to push through aren't accessible anymore.
Stage 2: Performance Degradation Despite Effort
Your performance falters even though you're working harder than ever. You can't find the wherewithal to keep training at your breakaway pace. Tasks that used to energize you now deplete you.
This is when executives start telling me, "I don't understand what's wrong with me. I used to be able to do this."
Alex Morgan experienced this as "losing a step." For the professionals I work with, it shows up as inability to sustain the intensity they built their reputation on, reduced capacity for complexity, or complete loss of enthusiasm for opportunities that look perfect on paper.
Many assume they're burning out. They double down on productivity systems, hire executive coaches, adjust their sleep protocols. They've outgrown the container.
Stage 3: Crippling Anxiety and Physical Symptoms
According to data published by the International Olympic Committee, 33.6% of elite athletes suffer from anxiety and depression during their careers, and when careers end, 26.4% experience severe mental health problems.
The anxiety becomes crippling. It prevents you from going back into your work environment. Olympic biathlete Joanna Phaneuf described her experience to NPR: "People would be like, 'Well, why did you retire? The Olympics are this year, you couldn't have just lasted that much longer?' And it's like no, you don't get it, I physically couldn't even get out of bed."
The physical manifestations are well-documented: sleep disturbance, digestive and gut problems, weight changes leading to mood disruption, injuries requiring medical intervention.
This is when professionals end up in my practice after their third bout of pneumonia in a year, chronic tension headaches that don't respond to treatment, or digestive issues that suddenly appeared despite consistent habits.
Stage 4: Complete Withdrawal of Cooperation
Hospitalization. Burnout so severe you cannot function. The body forces the transition you've been resisting.
Athletes with very strong identities tied to their sport have the hardest time with retirement, often pushing past earlier warning signals until the body makes the choice for them.
The professionals who wait until Stage 4 often describe feeling "stranded" or "left behind": exactly the language Shoma Uno used when his competitive peers retired before him.
Here's what most people miss: these signals are rarely recognized in real time. Looking back, the pattern is obvious. In the moment, you rationalize, compensate, and push through until you can't anymore.
For Olympic athletes, the container is primarily their identity as elite athlete and their career in competitive sport. The intensity, the training demands, the public performance: these are secondary to the core identity shift happening beneath the surface.
When Shoma Uno said he realized "skating isn't just about competition," he was recognizing that his identity as a competitive figure skater no longer held who he was becoming. The person he'd evolved into needed a different expression than what elite competition provided.
Alex Morgan articulated a similar realization: "I've found my calling in investing in women's sports, doing as much as I can to get as big of a platform to women's sports as possible." Her identity as a professional soccer player had become too small for who she was evolving into.
Some athletes remain in the public eye after retirement, transitioning their identity from competitor to coach, commentator, advocate, or entrepreneur. Michael Phelps became a mental health advocate. Joanna Phaneuf coaches young biathletes. They stayed connected to their sports while evolving their relationship to them.
Others disappear completely from public view, pivoting to entirely different fields. These are the athletes who show up in "where are they now" retrospectives years later, having built new lives completely separate from their athletic identities.
Both paths are valid. What matters: recognizing when the current container no longer fits your growth trajectory.
For executives and entrepreneurs, the container might be:
When you've outgrown your container, your roots have hit the edges of the pot. You can see this physically: chronic tension in shoulders or jaw, disrupted sleep, illness or injury that won't resolve, weight changes despite consistent habits, energy depletion that rest doesn't cure.
Recognize the container no longer matches your growth trajectory.
The world keeps accelerating. The Simplicity Protocol helps ambitious professionals do less to achieve more through weekly elimination strategies you can implement in 20 minutes or less.
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