After highly publicized stories of student-athletes’ struggles with mental health, the spotlight on mental health and well-being in this special issue coincides with a broader growing concern for the long-term impact of competitive sport participation on student-athlete health and wellness. The end of a competitive sport career represents a potentially vulnerable life transition. As demonstrated in the literature, the unique aspects of elite sport culture shape student-athletes’ perceptions of their identity, health, and health behaviors, which have implications for how student-athletes navigate their health and well-being as they transition away from the embedded health care structure inherent to elite sport. Given evidence indicating that student-athletes may face mental and physical health concerns after retirement from sports, targeted transitional strategies are needed to provide patient-centered care in this population. In this article, we briefly summarize current understanding of sport transition and highlight some key findings from studies conducted by the contributing authors’ research groups exploring the impact of sport career transitions on student-athlete well-being. We also reflect on limitations of the existing research and transition models and, in turn, propose potential directions for adopting a nuanced and multidimensional framework to explore interconnected transition domains. We conclude by offering recommendations for sports medicine professionals to consider in future research, programming, and policies to promote student-athletes’ holistic well-being through this critical transition.

The transition from competitive athletics to postcareer life presents unique challenges driven by shifts in identity. This study examined how multiple identity dimensions influence postcareer adaptation among South Korean student-athletes. Using a three-step approach to latent profile analysis with 393 South Korean student-athletes (150 women; M _age = 20.05 years), three distinct identity profiles, high multidimensional (71%), low multidimensional (24%), and exclusive athletic identity (5%), were identified based on measures of athletic, student, and exercise identity. Gender, career years, and national team experience significantly predicted profile membership. Student-athletes with high multidimensional identity profiles reported significantly greater perceived social support, higher likelihood of long-term physical activity adherence, and lower career concerns compared with other profiles. Results suggest that certain demographic groups, including women and national team experience, may benefit from targeted support for identity development and point to the need for culturally sensitive interventions to support holistic identity development and promote successful postcareer adaptation.

Determine the extent to which context stability during movement behaviours was associated with changes in habit strength, physical activity (PA) and sedentary behaviour (SB) and whether there were differences in these associations among PA and SB reduction adopters and maintainers. Older adults (N = 202; 60-85 years, 71.4% female, 74.4% White) completed three data collection periods over one year. Each data collection period included PA and SB habit strength and stage of change assessments, device-based PA and SB, and a 4-day intensive ecological momentary protocol capturing contextual features of PA and SB. Context stability was calculated as a reverse entropy score (categorical variables) or an intraindividual SD(continuous variables) for each contextual feature during PA and SB. Context stability was more consistently associated with changes in habit strength than behaviour. For PA, maintainers showed behaviour increases linked to stable temporal and affective contexts, while adopters showed habit gains tied to their most stable individual cue. For SB, context stability was unrelated to behaviour change, but adopters showed stronger SB habit formation with stable individual cues. Too few maintainers were available to assess SB comparisons. Findings support the theoretical link between context stability and habit strength, though the idiosyncratic nature of these associations should be considered.