I’d like to hear from those of you who formerly played team sports and transitioned to triathlon. What did you play and what has been your experience so far? What do you like and what don’t you like? How come you switched? I’m a former high school, college, and post collegiate lacrosse player. I made the transition to triathlon after a few years of not participating in athletics at all. I like being able to train by myself on my own time. Being on a team my life was always dictated to me by my coach and my schedule, especially in college. What time is practice, what time are the games, how long will practice last for etc etc. Now I can train when I want, for as long as I want, and race as much or as little as I please. I am only accountable to myself and that has been refreshing. I do miss the camaraderie, the locker room antics, and the friendships that come with being on a team. I can’t say that I like one more than the other but triathlon has been a refreshing change from my previous life as an athlete.
I’ll go. Played soccer through college, tried to play professionally for a few years but never was able to make a roster for an extended period of time. So stopped playing then wanted to do something else to push myself. Really enjoyed the change to individual sports because it really pushed me. I trained hard ALL the time and played soccer all year but I was always pushing not only for myself but also to not let me team down. So the fact that no one was making me get out of bed, or no one was making me workout as hard as I had to was really interesting and it got me hooked. I do miss the team part every now and then but love being able to train on MY time not when other people are ready and have time. Seems like we have similar thoughts on the change and how the team vs. individual aspect of the sport.
I’d like to hear from those of you who formerly played team sports and transitioned to triathlon. What did you play and what has been your experience so far? What do you like and what don’t you like? How come you switched? I’m a former high school, college, and post collegiate lacrosse player. I made the transition to triathlon after a few years of not participating in athletics at all. I like being able to train by myself on my own time. Being on a team my life was always dictated to me by my coach and my schedule, especially in college. What time is practice, what time are the games, how long will practice last for etc etc. Now I can train when I want, for as long as I want, and race as much or as little as I please. I am only accountable to myself and that has been refreshing. I do miss the camaraderie, the locker room antics, and the friendships that come with being on a team. I can’t say that I like one more than the other but triathlon has been a refreshing change from my previous life as an athlete.
Basketball player through college. Then continued in leagues into my 40’s. Injuries and Father Time eventually put you out of the game. So you turn to endurance sports. Starting cycling and swimming to continue the exercise. The wife is a runner, so I started that too. I thought, “might as well give tri a try.” I had some friends that were hyping it up. Did a Oly first, and hated it. So the friends said to try a Sprint because that would be more exciting. It wasn’t for me. SSDD. There is just not much variance or excitement there. The first mile is about the same as the last. You are just wearing a different hat and shoes. The disciplines are different, but they require the same athletically. A pretty flat line as far as what is needed from the athletes. More fitness required than raw athletic ability, especially as the distance goes up. I think the thing that bothered me the most is the small amount of competing in relation to the amount of training done. Compared to team sports, 5 to 10 events yearly is not much competing. It wasn’t for me. I still read the forum because there are some good threads. This should become one of those.
This is a very good topic to discuss coming from your perspective. The dynamics between solo sports and team sports are so different.
Probably the most interesting thing I have found when comparing different types of sports is how each sport requires a different type of training. Not harder or easier, just different. If you don’t train for that particular sport it will be hard and painful. For example, you might think you are in the best shape of your life with a really strong core and shoulders. But if you don’t golf at all and go out and put in training day like the average pro golfer does, that core and those shoulders will be really sore the next day. They were used a different way.
Triathlon is an individual event, but it doesn’t have to be a solitary sport.
I never played team sports, but being in a few running and triathlon clubs makes me feel like I’m on a team.
I’ve got people to train with, we have socials and fundraising events, and every once in a while, I volunteer at a local race, or Sherpa a friend in a big destination race.
And when any of us gets on the podium, we have plenty of people to cheer.
Totally different. As the above posters might attest to, you don’t live and breath the team sport like a triathlete does. It’s a daily grind that you want a break from as much as possible. You might be close as a team unit and have some friends on the squad, but when that practice or game is over you are generally headed your separate ways. Practice and games are so intense. By the end of the season you are so tired of each other and need the break. In tri you have control over everything except for some outside forces. Directly the opposite in team sports.
I discovered my interest in sports in college by trying and excelling at rowing. I had played basketball in highschool due to my height but was just mediocre at best. As far as team sports go, rowing, in my opinion, is a funny one. You are quite literally all in the same boat (sorry, had to make this pun) but you’re all with your back turned toward each other. Depending on your position in the boat, you can see what others are doing without them seeing what you are doing. This has the potential for laying blame at others instead of at yourself. In addition, it is very hard to measure individual contribution to a team’s effort. Sure, you can measure power on a stationary ergometer, and you can look at technique or even speed in a single scull, but you can never 100% emphatically say how this translates to fours or eights. This little rant aside, the mental aspect of the team is so big, you really CANNOT stop rowing if others don’t stop. You’ll have an oarhandle thrust in your back of you do, not to mention the workload increases so much for others, rhythm is disrupted, and the steering course of the boat will change. You can reduce the effort required to make each stroke, but in a certain rhythm, it will still take considerable effort to keep going.
This mental training that I’ve undergone is something I can only rarely tap into for any other kind of racing. Yesterday I did a local 10k and I was able to “sprint” the last 500m only because I was egging on a fellow competitor to battle me to the end. I just can’t go as deep without having others around me. This mental thing is only stimulated by competitors, not by team mates as they do not exist. To me, that is one of the huge differences between my team sport history and my triathlon experience so far. I have to add of course that the level of racing triathlons is not at the same level as I was with rowing, but I expect that the team aspect is not that much bigger in traditional style tri’s. There are some team or relay tri’s where this element may be bigger (and perhaps illustratively, I also do relays, generally with a full former rower squad 
but yeah this is what I see as the biggest difference. Of course the camaraderie is also huge, and the team being bigger than the sum of its parts, but the mental thing is something that will always stick out and why I will never be able to go as hard in triathlon as I was able to go in rowing. It’s also the reason why almost any rower will 100% prefer a rowing race to an erg test. The former is a team effort and while it will hurt probably just as much, the erg test is a personal reflection whereas the racing is a team effort, and you just cannot stop and step off the machine if you’re not able to pull the splits you were hoping for.
Good post!
Interesting thoughts.
I played basketball when I was in high school because I was tall, and fast. But being so skinny, I was no real value banging under the boards.
My memories of being on these “teams” was they were really not teams. They were a bunch of guys, most of who all had ego’s, and were out there to get their glory.
I still remember my junior year when I was on the starting team on Varsity with a group of seniors who over the years had been written up that they were going to be the next big NBA
stars. As the season went alone, some of them started to get hurt some so the wins were more difficult. I remember playing in our home gym against the other top team we were tied
with and whoever won would probably win the division and go to the state championships. So we are down to seconds left in the game and down by 1 point. We are at our end of the court
and one of the star ego guards was out at the three point line with the ball who loved to shoot. I was right under the board with no on me saying pass me the ball and I had an easy layup and we win.
But what does this guy do? No way was he going to pass me the ball and lose his chance at glory. Instead, he puts up a 3 point shot, misses, and the buzzer goes off. That team
went to the state championships, and we were second.
I also remember playing a few years later in a C league basketball team. But all I saw there were a bunch of ex football players who had never been any good at playing basketball.
All they would do is elbow and push. The last time I had someone on purchase under cut me was the last time I ever played team basketball. I was used to playing with top players
who never did crap like that. They were good enough they did not need to resort to nasty stuff.
What I just love about triathlon is any results I get are 100% determined by me and only me. If I do not train it is my fault. If I do not race hard, it is my fault. Now, I am lucky for some reason that
give me a race, and I can dig much deeper than I can ever do in training with giving it all I have to the finish line. I mentally race against the clock for USAT points. How I place I really could care less,
especially at my age there are not a lot of fast racers left.
I would have no desire to do team sports again. Very few I ever played with had the work ethics I had.
Now if I were on a real team as you were, I might have a different opinion.
Dave, your thoughts on the team aspect in basketball are similar to mine actually We also had a bunch of wannabe gangsters on the team and I was also too “nice” for basketball, I got the rebounds sure, but posting etc which is quite important for being a center I would get pushed around a bit. I also didn’t have the work ethic and I think we practiced maybe 2-3 times a week (this is club basketball, not in the US).When I first started rowing I remember quite clearly the first time I felt the lactic acid in my legs. I had never felt this sensation in my legs before, which kind of goes to show how soft the training was for basketball I guess. The rowing squad trained 10-14 times a week so it was basically your family for that time, you share the highs and the lows. I’m sure if I was any better at basketball and my team trained every day I would have felt more of a teamspirit with them.
I played baseball in college. I miss the team aspect of competing but getting to train however and whenever i want completely outweighs that. I have a few guys up here that I periodically run/ride/compete against and that helps the motivation.
This statement resonates with me “Very few I ever played with had the work ethics I had.”.
Being that water doesn’t seem to freeze right down the block from me, here in Philly, playing ice hockey is quite a time commitment. Drive to rink, get dressed, play a “45 min” game in which I get maybe 15 min of cardio, change, return home. Yes, love the locker room and bench camaraderie, and the post-game food/drink. And love the sport itself. But feeling like I work harder than other people seem to want to has been a continual source of frustration for me, and the time investment relative to the fix I get is very much slanted in the wrong direction (and that’s for my “local” rink, 20 mi from home; forget about the 2-3 h travel to away games).
Contrast triathlon. As others have said, its convenient to train on my time. When I go to group training the amount of hard work or not that anyone else puts in has no bearing on what I can get out of it, and by and large we are all competitive and pushing each other. That said, my working as hard as I can but being slower than other swimmers doesn’t hold them back at all since they still get to work as hard as they can in their faster-moving lane. It’s a win all around.
This statement resonates with me “Very few I ever played with had the work ethics I had.”.
Being that water doesn’t seem to freeze right down the block from me, here in Philly, playing ice hockey is quite a time commitment. Drive to rink, get dressed, play a “45 min” game in which I get maybe 15 min of cardio, change, return home. Yes, love the locker room and bench camaraderie, and the post-game food/drink. And love the sport itself. But feeling like I work harder than other people seem to want to has been a continual source of frustration for me, and the time investment relative to the fix I get is very much slanted in the wrong direction (and that’s for my “local” rink, 20 mi from home; forget about the 2-3 h travel to away games).
Contrast triathlon. As others have said, its convenient to train on my time. When I go to group training the amount of hard work or not that anyone else puts in has no bearing on what I can get out of it, and by and large we are all competitive and pushing each other. That said, my working as hard as I can but being slower than other swimmers doesn’t hold them back at all since they still get to work as hard as they can in their faster-moving lane. It’s a win all around.
Totally agree.
And when I can get in 2 to 3 hours of exercise per day, with a max of a mile drive from my house for my runs, and then be home no later than 9, the family loves it. The rest of the day I can devote to whatever they want since I got in my total training package for the day with zero impacts on them.
Since I have never drank, being part of the guys was never something I did. After the basketball games, the other team members would go party. I would go to the pizza place with my girlfriend.
Basically I train on my schedule since so few folks can get up early and train. Am lucky I have a few in our community that during swim season when I get to the pool at 5:05 AM, they are they to get it open with me.
And as Dev has stated, I am a lifestyle athlete, I do this stuff everyday, whether I race or not.
I liked your comment on drive time to workout time. I bag the swimming in the off season since I am not willing to drive an hour for an hour of swim workout.
This!
I played team sports growing up, not to the level of some of you, but I know the feeling. For me personally, in triathlon, I need to have something driving me to make sure I work hard enough. I usually pick the guy in our club that is a little faster than me. Now I am the 2nd or 3rd fastest guy in our group. The one last carrot hanging in front of me is beating my brother… And I’m working my ass off this winter to try and make it happen. But, I am a pretty competitive guy.
I also like to make bets with the payments either being money or something very publicly embarrassing for the losing party at our next local tri. But I find others are not as competitive as me and are in this sport for more of the ra ra commraderie aspect of it, which bugs me… After all, we are RACING!!
I discovered my interest in sports in college by trying and excelling at rowing. I had played basketball in highschool due to my height but was just mediocre at best. As far as team sports go, rowing, in my opinion, is a funny one. You are quite literally all in the same boat (sorry, had to make this pun) but you’re all with your back turned toward each other. Depending on your position in the boat, you can see what others are doing without them seeing what you are doing. This has the potential for laying blame at others instead of at yourself. In addition, it is very hard to measure individual contribution to a team’s effort. Sure, you can measure power on a stationary ergometer, and you can look at technique or even speed in a single scull, but you can never 100% emphatically say how this translates to fours or eights. This little rant aside, the mental aspect of the team is so big, you really CANNOT stop rowing if others don’t stop. You’ll have an oarhandle thrust in your back of you do, not to mention the workload increases so much for others, rhythm is disrupted, and the steering course of the boat will change. You can reduce the effort required to make each stroke, but in a certain rhythm, it will still take considerable effort to keep going.
This mental training that I’ve undergone is something I can only rarely tap into for any other kind of racing. Yesterday I did a local 10k and I was able to “sprint” the last 500m only because I was egging on a fellow competitor to battle me to the end. I just can’t go as deep without having others around me. This mental thing is only stimulated by competitors, not by team mates as they do not exist. To me, that is one of the huge differences between my team sport history and my triathlon experience so far. I have to add of course that the level of racing triathlons is not at the same level as I was with rowing, but I expect that the team aspect is not that much bigger in traditional style tri’s. There are some team or relay tri’s where this element may be bigger (and perhaps illustratively, I also do relays, generally with a full former rower squad but yeah this is what I see as the biggest difference. Of course the camaraderie is also huge, and the team being bigger than the sum of its parts, but the mental thing is something that will always stick out and why I will never be able to go as hard in triathlon as I was able to go in rowing. It’s also the reason why almost any rower will 100% prefer a rowing race to an erg test. The former is a team effort and while it will hurt probably just as much, the erg test is a personal reflection whereas the racing is a team effort, and you just cannot stop and step off the machine if you’re not able to pull the splits you were hoping for.
I played Tier 2 junior hockey here in Canada and still play in what I would describe as a semi-competitive beer league through my university. When I started cycling I really enjoyed training alone. Then, this past summer I joined a cycling team and did a bit of low level racing. Realized that I desperately missed the competitive environment and the overall atmosphere of team sports. I’ve moved around a lot so team sports have always been how I’ve made the majority of my friends growing up and it’s pretty much just transitioned from meeting them through hockey to meeting them through cycling. Running and flopping around in the water I do alone, and perhaps that’s why my motivation for doing both is much lower than it is to play bikes.
I played soccer, though like many endurance athletes running (eventually triathlon) chose me.
I was an okay full back, but I didn’t have the “mind” for the game. At least not at the level others did. I mean the ability to see the field, predict, anticipate and execute without a split second of hesitation. I wasn’t horrible at this, but I knew it wasn’t my thing in a team sports setting.
Endurance sports allowed me to use my drive for competition and pushing myself, without the need for the above and being able to rely on myself on race day. Coincidentally, one of my favorite things to do is mountain biking, requiring a high level of mental sharpness. But in many ways the mental requirement is different than team sports. Since, if I make a poor decision I am face planting into a tree or breaking something :).
I was a swimmer all my life so I don’t have anything to add to the discussion, but I do want to derail it and double check that your screename is a reference to the greatest BMX movie of all time - RAD…
I was a swimmer all my life so I don’t have anything to add to the discussion, but I do want to derail it and double check that your screename is a reference to the greatest BMX movie of all time - RAD…
Good catch there, you are exactly right. You’re the first person to ever comment on that.
Not much more significant to add except that many people who played team sports love that triathlon is a solo performance that can’t get screwed up by other people on the team. If you’re good, you do well. If you fail, then it was all your own fault. Results are no longer left up to a lottery that everybody on your team has an A game that day.
Swimming is kind of a mixed bag. Individual performances can add up to a team victory. And if your team won, that’s nice, but not crucial. A swim relay is about as true a “team” performance you can get in swimming, but even those are created one swimmer at a time.
I played volleyball in college and was a setter. My teammates were and are some my closest friends in the world and I would do anything for those girls. I was lucky that volleyball enabled me to get a very good education doing something I loved. But my coach was crazy and by my senior year she had ruined volleyball for me. I haven’t touched a ball since the last play of my last game of my senior year.
I had always been a runner (but never allowed to run long distances because it wasn’t good for my jumping) so once I started law school and then joined the real world I ran based on how much stress I had to release and how much I’d ate/drank the night before. Some guys I worked with got into cycling and convinced me to buy a bike. Being young and considering myself athletic I signed up for St. Croix thinking it would be fun to combine a vacation and “a race”. I started swimming and after a week of swimming on my own and realizing just how far the swim actually was and how bad I was at swimming, I freaked out a bit, got a coach, and the rest is history.
I miss the team element but I have a great group that I often train with and I have my friends at masters. So while the pressure is individual, it really doesn’t feel that differently to me than volleyball did in college.