Comparative Analysis of Health-Related Lifestyle Among Retired Professional Players of Different Sports
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Abstract
Background: Retirement from competitive sport is among the most crucial transitions in an athlete’s life, yet its association with long-term health-related lifestyle remains poorly characterised in India, where systematic, multi-sport, discipline-specific evidence is lacking.
Objective: This study evaluated and compared health-related lifestyle across eight dimensions like alcohol and drug habit, emotional and intellectual wellness, nutrition, physical fitness, social wellness, spiritual wellness and stress management and a composite score among retired male professional sportspersons from eight structurally different sports in India.
Methods: A cross-sectional, descriptive-comparative survey design was used. A two-stage purposive-then-random sampling procedure yielded 400 retired male sportspersons representing Cricket, Football, Volleyball, Basketball, Track & Field, Badminton, Wrestling, and Judo, aged 40–50 years (M = 45.18, SD = 3.14), retired at least 10 years previously (M = 12.54, SD = 4.63). Data were obtained with the 40-item Lifestyle Assessment Inventory (LSAI), administered as a structured online form, and analysed in Python (SciPy, pandas, statsmodels) with cross-verification in IBM SPSS Statistics, using one-way ANOVA, Kruskal–Wallis H tests, eta-squared, and Tukey's HSD post-hoc comparisons.
Results: Achieved sample sizes ranged from 23 (Basketball) to 83 (Track & Field) rather than being evenly distributed, reflecting differential access to eligible retirees through federations, academies, and alumni networks rather than a balanced design. Sport groups did not differ significantly in physical fitness (F(7,392) = 1.92, p = .066, η² = .033) or nutrition (F(7,392) = 1.63, p = .126, η² = .028), but differed significantly in alcohol and drug habits (F(7,392) = 2.65, p = .011, η² = .045), spiritual wellness (F(7,392) = 5.04, p < .001, η² = .083), emotional wellness (F(7,392) = 3.97, p < .001, η² = .066), stress management (F(7,392) = 3.70, p = .001, η² = .062), intellectual wellness (F(7,392) = 2.52, p = .015, η² = .043), and, most substantially, the composite Overall Health-Related Lifestyle score (F(7,392) = 13.51, p < .001, η² = .194), a large effect. Volleyball and Track & Field retirees reported markedly lower composite scores than Cricket, Football, Badminton, Wrestling, and Judo retirees. Kruskal–Wallis tests corroborated these patterns. Internal consistency was acceptable for the 40-item composite (α = .86) but inconsistent, and in three sub-scales negative, at the individual sub-scale level.
Conclusion: Contrary to a pure convergence hypothesis, health-related lifestyle after sports retirement in this Indian sample varied systematically by sport, particularly for psychosocial and behavioural dimensions and the composite index, while physical fitness and nutrition were comparatively uniform across sports. This pattern has direct implications for the design of sport-federation-specific, rather than generic, post-retirement support programming.....
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