As a swimmer, I absolutely looked forward to the day when my back and shoulder muscles would go down and I wouldn’t feel like I was the Hulk, busting out of my shirts. However, as far as eating is concerned, going from swimming doubles and not being able to eat enough to replenish what I was losing in training each day back to a regular human being is BRUTAL! It takes a couple of weeks for your metabolism to adjust and those weeks were terrible [re: I could no longer eat 10 cookies after a huge pasta dinner]. I feel lucky that I’m a runner by nature and enjoy running post-season, but nothing’s the same as swimming hard for 4 hours a day and not everyone has the luxury of being able to escape the chlorine for “land sports.”

I know someone whose had the same struggles. It's me! I'm a former student-athlete. I played soccer from the time I was 6 until I was 21. After college, I didn't really know how to work out anymore. I knew I didn't need to train as vigorously as I had in the past, but I still wanted something that allowed me to be competitive and get a good work out in. I too decided to join organized classes at the gym. I agree with you Molly, the classes offer direction and appeal to my competitive nature. I also don’t drink sports drinks now. After my dentist told me sports drinks were bad for my teeth, I stopped drinking them once I wasn’t a student-athlete anymore. He said for my post student-athlete life, water would do just fine. I thought this was interesting because as you brought up in the article, student-athletes aren’t prepared for this aspect of their lives. We go through college as if we’re going to be athletes forever. It can be a tough transition. I think it would be good to offer some type of class at gyms geared towards former student-athletes. The number of young adults that go through this is more than people realize.

I am still struggling with this issue. When I played college football I was a 315 lb center my senior year, which was 2004. I have managed to stay in the 250-260 lb range for the past 2 years. I would like to get down to 240 lbs, but have hit a plateau. I can't say that I have ever been lost in the weight room and not known what exercises to do. I started out lifting heavy, much like you did because that is what I did for 4 years of college. Now I have gotten to the point where I just want to maintain, this meant going to a medium weight and medium rep workout(6-8). I was a kinesiology major, so that experience helped me understand what I needed to do to be healthy once I got done playing college football. The real problem was lowering my caloric intake. The amount of food you can get at the “all you can eat” dining hall makes it tough. The portion control part is hard when someone else isn't doing it for you. My brother kept telling me about how he was on Jenny Craig and how it was helping him. I on the other hand just made myself cut back and sometimes I struggle with cutting back. Being a big guy, with "big" running in my family it was/is a struggle everyday to not eat a lot. When you are playing they want you big, most lineman are big. The offensive line I played on averaged 322 lbs. I really need to read that SI article to see what other people are saying. Some of my friends I played with got as big as 400 lbs after they got done playing. I am just glad I never got that big.