Questions to Ask an Athlete
Questions for talking with an athlete you actually know, as a friend, partner or parent: training, rest days, what the sport costs them, and how they want you to behave around results.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What got you into it in the first place?
Why ask it
Origin stories in sport are usually small and unromantic: a sibling already doing it, a school that happened to have a pool, a friend who needed a partner. Starting here keeps the conversation off performance, which is where everyone else starts and where athletes are most guarded.
What is training like at the moment: are you enjoying it or grinding through it?
Why ask it
This distinction matters more than the schedule does. Athletes go through months of loving the work and months of enduring it, and knowing which phase they are in tells you how to talk to them for the next few weeks.
What is the best part of your week?
Why ask it
Deliberately says nothing about competition, so the answers tend to be small: one particular session, the drive home, coffee afterwards, the training partner who makes the whole thing funny.
What do you eat before a session, and do you actually like it?
Why ask it
A low-stakes route into how much of their eating is planned rather than chosen, which is one of the least visible parts of a sporting life. It is often funny too, since the answer is frequently something joyless they have eaten daily for years.
Do you listen to anything while you train, or do you need quiet?
Why ask it
Small, easy to answer, and it shows how they get themselves into the right state. Some need something to disappear into, others find any input unbearable once the effort gets hard.
Who do you train with, and what are they like?
Why ask it
Training partners are the people they see most and mention least outside the sport. This gets you names and characters, and it is usually where the conversation stops being about sport at all.
What is the most ridiculous thing you have done for your sport?
Why ask it
Asks for a story rather than an assessment. Nearly every athlete has done something absurd, and telling it lets them be funny about the commitment instead of having to defend it.
Is there a part of it you have never enjoyed?
Why ask it
Gives permission to dislike part of their own sport, which almost nobody offers them. The answer might be the cold, the weigh-ins, the travel, or competing itself, and any of those explains a lot about their year.
What do you do on a day off, if you get one?
Why ask it
Rest days are more revealing than training days, because they show whether there is a life running alongside the sport or one the sport has fully absorbed. Notice if they struggle to answer at all.
How do you want people to behave when they come and watch you?
Why ask it
Practical, and hardly ever asked. Some athletes want people there and visible, others find a familiar face genuinely disruptive, and most have never been consulted. Asking stops a well-meant appearance from becoming a problem.
Do you want to talk about how it went, or would you rather not?
Why ask it
Checks consent before you go near the result. They may have discussed it six times already, and this stops you delivering commiseration to someone who wanted twenty minutes of ordinary conversation.
What do people say to you after a loss that misses the mark?
Why ask it
Everyone reaches for the same few phrases after a defeat, so hearing which ones grate is immediately useful to you. It also gets at what they do want, which is usually company rather than analysis.
How does your sport show up at home: the early nights, the food, the travel?
Why ask it
Moves the subject to the household, where the effects are concrete: missing weekends, meals planned around sessions, a partner who eats alone. It works whether you are the partner, the parent, or the friend whose invitations keep being declined.
What have you given up for this that you sometimes miss?
Why ask it
Asked without judgement, this produces an honest inventory: nights out, a course, a relationship, a stretch of their twenties. Athletes rarely raise the cost side themselves, because saying it aloud can sound like complaining.
Are you carrying anything at the moment that you are not making a fuss about?
Why ask it
The phrasing lets them mention a niggle without declaring an injury, which is the whole reason athletes keep quiet about these. If they do tell you, bear in mind they may not have told their coach.
Who in your life is honest with you about your performance?
Why ask it
Finds out whether anyone is allowed to say something unwelcome, or whether the sport has left them ringed by encouragement. The absence of such a person is usually the more telling answer.
What would you do with the time if you stopped tomorrow?
Why ask it
A hypothetical costs them nothing to answer, and it tends to surface something they genuinely miss. It also opens the subject of life after sport without implying you think they should quit.
Where do you think you will be with this in five years?
Why ask it
Far enough out to allow honesty, close enough to be real, and for most athletes it sits inside the window where the body decides. Expect a mixture of ambition and quiet arithmetic about age.
What do you know about yourself now that you did not know before you started?
Why ask it
Better than asking what sport has taught them, which invites a motivational poster. This gets something particular: a limit they found, a temper they now recognise, a tolerance for discomfort that surprised them.
What do you wish more people understood about your sport?
Why ask it
Ends by letting them correct the record on something that actually bothers them, whether that is testing, funding, judging, or how easy it all looks on television. You get the frustration they normally swallow.
Being good company for an athlete
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
How to talk about it
Ask before you analyse
Watching someone's sport does not make your read on their performance welcome. Unless they ask for it, keep your view of the tactics, the coach and the officials to yourself, and ask a question instead.
Learn the calendar, not the jargon
Knowing whether they are in preseason, taper or off-season explains more about what they can do socially than any amount of terminology. Ask once, remember it, and stop reading cancellations as a verdict on you.
Comment on what you actually saw
Results are largely out of their hands. Mentioning something specific, a session done in bad weather, a first competition back from injury, lands better than congratulating them on a scoreline they only partly controlled.
Let them be bored of it
Plenty of athletes want at least one relationship where the sport barely comes up. Being the person who talks about something else is often worth more than being the person who is very interested.
Around competition
Beforehand
Keep contact short and practical. A brief message is fine, a long conversation about expectations is not, and questions about how they are feeling are better saved until afterwards.
Immediately afterwards
Follow their lead on whether the result gets discussed at all. If it went well, ask what they were pleased with rather than how it feels. If it went badly, offer food, a lift or quiet before offering any interpretation.
A few days later
This is when the real conversation becomes possible. They have watched it back and spoken to their coach, and they can tell you what happened without having to manage their own disappointment in front of you.
When they are injured
The hard part is the loss of structure rather than the pain. Keep inviting them to things, ask what they are allowed to do rather than when they will be back, and expect the mood to be worse in week six than in week one.
Things not to say
- "So are you going to make it professionally?" asks someone to forecast their own ceiling out loud, in front of people.
- Comparing them to a well-known athlete in their sport is not a compliment. It invites them to measure the gap.
- Asking what they are allowed to eat and then remarking on it turns a meal into a conversation about their body.
- Training advice drawn from an article you read has a very poor record with people who are coached professionally.
- Comments about weight, in either direction, do more damage in sport than almost any other subject.
- Asking an injured athlete when they will be back repeats the one question they cannot answer and are asked constantly.