How to use your strengths after your career? A Czech Olympic Committee workshop for athletes

They are working on their development. Czech athletes learned how they can use their strengths during and after their careers at a workshop organized by the Czech Olympic Committee's Athletes' Commission. Šárka Strachová, Olympic bronze medalist in alpine skiing, and Tomáš Bábek, European champion in track cycling, spoke about overcoming difficult situations and learning from them. Together with mental performance coach Petr Žídek, they told the athletes how to succeed after the end of their careers and why employers value former athletes.

“We are performance-oriented, we get things done, we know how to work as a team, and we can bite the bullet when things go wrong. Also, we are used to leaving our comfort zone. That brings us to the next level. Few people can do that,” said Strachová, who runs a holistic therapy and sports clinic and chairs the Czech Fair Play Club at the Czech Olympic Committee.

Vzdělávací seminář pro sportovce 2023

This and the other sessions of the workshop which took place at the Clarion Hotel Old Town in the centre of Prague were attended by fencer Jiří Beran, hockey player Michal Vondrka, water slalom racer Lukáš Rohan and others. The program also included a lecture by hockey and mental performance coach Marian Jelínek who spoke about working with the state of mind. For example, he talked about the mindset of the Olympic champion and hockey legend Jaromír Jágr, and how coach Ivan Hlinka was able to use humor to cheer up his team when they were losing the game after one period and the mood in the locker room was at the freezing point.

This workshop gave me some insight into the overall thinking.

In addition, the audience received valuable advice from the trainers on anti-doping and financial literacy. “This workshop gave me some insight into the overall thinking. I heard some stories I can relate to because I recently retired from competitive sports and I am going through that change myself”, said Michal Vondrka, who is now the manager of the U18 national hockey team. “I can use a lot of knowledge from this workshop with the national team when communicating with young players. It was very useful for me,” added the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympian.