Competitive Athletes Who Stop Find it Hard to Restart

Are competitive athletes more likely than the rest of us to turn into human blobs when the games are over? The New York Times doesn’t say exactly that, but it comes close. The paper quotes Dan Gould, the director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University in Lansing, who says that he has found that athletes who played for trophies
or attention are more at risk of becoming sedentary as adults than
people who have taught themselves to get off the sofa and exercise,
those with "intrinsic motivation."
And Stephen J. Virgilio, the author of "Active Start for Healthy Kids"
(Human Kinetics, 2005), tells the paper that people who grew up without the stress
of sports often enjoy hitting the gym, but those who competed
in athletics at a younger age have trouble exercising merely for
upkeep, especially when many coaches don’t emphasize fitness. Don’t believe it? Read more in the New York Times.