These last months have been crazy busy (more on that later), and one thing that I am still working through is; who do I want to be post-retirement and what is my brand. Being a professional athlete is what taught me life lessons, hard work, discipline and what it means to chase your dreams but at the same time I am more than an athlete and that isn’t what defines me.
 

“Surround yourself with friends and family that were there through it all - the good, the bad and everything in-between because their love for you was never defined by wins and losses”

A lot of athletes: professionals, juniors or at the collegiate level, have identity problems once they retire, whether through choice or circumstances out of their control. Personally, I am really at peace with my decision and genuinely feel that it was the right time for me to hang up my rackets with zero regrets. However, I can completely understand why some people feel ‘lost’, after days filled with plans, parameters of what to do and what not to do, working towards a constant goal and surrounded by a team. Everyone will deal with their situation in their own way, but I believe the following can definitely help:

• Keeping a routine, even if you don’t know what you want to do personally or professionally, set yourself tasks every day.  
• Staying in shape and keeping your body moving because just as going from doing nothing to working out every day, is a shock to the body, the inverse is as well.
• THE MOST IMPERATIVE is to surround yourself with friends and family that were there through it all - the good, the bad and everything in-between because their love for you was never defined by wins and losses and the fact you were a professional athlete. To my support bubble I am Julia Goerges the human, the daughter, the sister, the friend and not Julia Goerges the professional tennis player, and to them I am forever grateful.

From my career I was used to the body being under constant stress and pressure. As I mentioned previously, I believe it is important to keep routine and habits, so I try to keep myself feeling good by working out and putting quality food into my body.

Throughout my career I learnt a lot about healthy food alternatives and different types of diets, but personally “moderation” works best for me. For example, I am not a vegan or vegetarian but choose alternatives to regular milk and also limit my meat consumption.

This month I wanted to share with you one of my current favourite healthy recipes: Buckwheat Noodles (also known as Soba noodles). Buckwheat is a great alternative to regular flour-based pasta/noodles.

Buckwheat is full of great micronutrients, is gluten-free, has less carbohydrates but is high in fibre and protein. Some people even class buckwheat as a superfood because of its beneficial characteristics.

If you would like to read more about the benefits of Buckwheat, here >> is a great read from BBC GoodFood.

International Women’s Day was this past month, which is a great day on the calendar to celebrate women. As a proud member of the female race, I am proud of the continual progress we are making to equality in the professional world, as well as respecting ourselves and empowering each other.

However, off the back of this day of celebration there was a tragic incident in London involving a young woman called Sarah Everard. There was a lot of relatable content on social media discussing conscious and unconscious actions women take to protect themselves when walking home and some scarily high statistics about how many women don’t feel safe walking down the street - this highlights the there is still a lot of work and education to be done.

One easy resource (if you have iPhone) that got my attention, is the Emergency SOS feature which is both a subtle deterrent and could help anyone in danger, both men and women. If you don’t already have it here is how you set it up:

iPhone Emergency SOS directions:

• Go to settings and select Emergency SOS
• Make sure “Call with Side Button” is turned on
• Click “Set Up Emergency Contacts in Health”
• Click “Edit” top right
• Click “add emergency contact” and select your close family members and friends
• Now from the locked screen you can press the lock button 5 times quickly and your phone will make a siren noise and give you a 3 second countdown before calling the emergency services and notifying your emergency contacts of your location.
   (You can click the ‘x’ to cancel if this was a mistake).

See here >> Apple highlighting this feature that has been around for a while, but this was new to me so I hope this will help someone else feel a bit safer too :-)