The Question I Get in the Gym Parking Lot

Someone always asks me the same thing after a set of heavy squats: “are you still training for something?” No. I train because I like how it feels to be strong, and because golf punishes a stiff back. But the honest answer is longer than that, and it changes how I think about lifting now compared to when I had a coach designing every rep for me.

What Training Looked Like When Someone Else Was in Charge

When football was the job, my training had a purpose that came from outside me. A strength coach built the plan. The season told me when to peak and when to rest. I didn’t have to think about why I was doing a lift, only whether I did it right.

That structure worked. It also meant I never had to build my own reasons for showing up. The reason was always sitting there waiting for me: a game, a camp, a coach watching.

The Gap Nobody Warns You About

Once that outside structure is gone, you find out fast whether you actually like training or whether you liked being told to. A lot of guys I know from that world stopped lifting entirely once nobody was checking. Not because they got lazy. Because the whole system that made training automatic disappeared overnight, and nothing replaced it.

I didn’t want that gap. So I had to figure out, on my own, what training is for when there’s no season attached to it.

How I Actually Rebuilt It

The first thing I dropped was the idea that a workout needs a purpose bigger than itself. I used to think lifting only counted if it was building toward a performance. Now a heavy day counts because it’s a heavy day. That sounds small, but it changes what you do in the gym.

Here’s the shift in practice:

• I stopped programming around a competition calendar and started programming around how my body feels week to week.
• I lift heavier on fewer things instead of everything a football strength program used to demand.
• I pay more attention to mobility and joints than I ever did at twenty-two, because recovery isn’t automatic anymore.
• I treat golf as part of the training, not separate from it. Rotation, hips, grip strength, all of it carries over.

None of this is complicated. What’s hard is that nobody is grading it. You have to decide for yourself that the work is worth doing.

Why the Old Approach Doesn’t Transfer Directly

A lot of advice aimed at former athletes says “just keep training like you used to, only lighter.” I think that’s backwards. The volume that made sense for a football body preparing for contact doesn’t make sense for a body that isn’t taking contact anymore. Copying the old program at a lower intensity gives you the worst of both: still too much wear, without the reason for it.

What actually works is asking what your body needs now, not what it used to need. For me that meant less total volume, more attention to the joints that took the most abuse, and a much bigger role for recovery than I ever gave it before.

What I’d Tell Someone Right After They Stop Playing

Don’t wait for a new external reason to show up before you start training again. It won’t. Nobody is coming to hand you a new season. If you want the habit to survive, you have to want it for its own sake, or find a smaller reason that’s yours: golf, general health, just liking how strong feels.

Start simpler than you think you need to. Pick a handful of lifts you can do well and consistently. Add mobility work early, not after something starts hurting. And give yourself permission to train without a scoreboard attached to it. That was the part that took me the longest to accept, and it’s the part that actually made the habit last.