At age 54, one of the top soccer players in history is still thinking about how she should have listened to her mom as a young athlete.
“She told me all the time to stretch,” Mia Hamm told Business Insider. “As a young player, my warmup was much shorter, and the thought of stretching just took away from the technical and physical side of the game.”
After intense training, her recovery routine was minimal — maybe a dip in an ice tub after a match or a few minutes of stretching as an afterthought.
Today, she wonders if a little more rest and recovery could have prevented the aches and pains, as well as the serious knee and ankle injuries.
After retiring from soccer in 2004, Hamm learned the hard way that a recovery routine is crucial if you want to stay fit without the support of a professional team. She realized she needed a different type of training for her next phase of life as a mom, advocate, and entrepreneur. “I tried to train like a former athlete, and that’s a full-time job. It’s really hard to do that,” she said.
Hamm spoke with Business Insider in an interview on her partnership with Tylenol’s PainTalk campaign, dedicated to raising awareness of better recovery habits for athletes at all levels.
“There’s still this kind of mentality of, ‘well, we just have to gut through it,'” she said.
Since then, she’s tweaked her fitness routine to prioritize training smarter, not harder, for a long, healthy life.
“It’s not just going into the weight room and throwing around as much weight as you can. It’s specific to your sport, it’s specific to your body, and specific to your deficiencies as an athlete,” Hamm said.
Muscle activation to offset sitting all day
Hamm still relies on strength training for healthy muscles, but she said she’s not trying to maximize power or explosiveness, as she did as a competitive athlete
Instead, she focuses on fixing specific muscle imbalances to prevent injuries and pain in her joints and back.
“It’s easy for certain muscles, the smaller muscles, the support muscles to turn off,” she said. “I need to do a lot of glute activation and hip flexor activation prior to golfing because if not, then my back takes over.”
Her routine includes working out with resistance bands, lighter weights, and single-leg balance exercises, often with rotation, to improve classic longevity metrics like mobility, stability, and balance.
Interval training for heart health
As a soccer star, Hamm covered miles of ground during each game. These days, she relies less on long runs and more on quick bursts of cardio to keep her heart healthy and her stamina high.
“If you want to try to deepen your fitness base, intervals are always a great way to do it,” she said. “I don’t even go out on three-mile runs because my body can’t handle it as much, the wear and tear, but I will still get my heart rate up.”
Interval training involves multiple short, high-intensity cardio sessions with rest or lower-intensity exercise in between. It can improve stamina and support a healthy heart while saving time and avoiding unnecessary joint strain.
Hamm said her current workouts often include one-minute stints on an exercise bike, alternating with weights or resistance-band exercises.
Golf is famously good for longevity
Hamm may be best known for soccer, but her sport of choice lately is golf. She started playing after college, and used it as a source of stress relief during World Cup and Olympics training.
She also found it made her a better athlete.
“What I love about the game of golf is that it magnified my weaknesses as a soccer player. I just carried a lot of my mistakes with me on the field,” she said. “In golf, you can’t perform if you’re thinking about three shots ago.”
Golf is an ideal sport for longevity, too, since it involves plenty of low-intensity walking, mental exercise, and socializing, all of which are linked to healthier aging.
For Hamm, it’s yet another reminder to take a breath, stay present, and not stress too much.
“The other thing about golf is, the harder you grip the club, the worse the outcome. So you really have to let go and try to eliminate tension in your body, which means eliminating some tension in your life, and that’s not always easy to do,” Hamm said.
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