How Abby Wambach Found Her Next Championship

Abby Wambach spent a career arriving a half-second later than the ball and a half-second earlier than the keeper. The finish people remember came in the 122nd minute against Brazil in 2011, Megan Rapinoe’s ball dropping out of the night and Wambach meeting it like the cross had been sent to her address. She walked away with 184 international goals, more than any man or woman had scored for a national team at the time. Two Olympic golds. A World Cup in Canada in 2015, the one she had told herself she could not leave without. A University of Florida career that announced her before the national team did. Then, in December 2015, the cleats came off, and the woman who had been programmed to endure a specific amount of pain had to figure out what the pain was for if nobody was keeping score.

She was the youngest of seven, the last kid in a Rochester house where the athletic standard had already been set by the time she could walk. Her eldest sister, Beth, played basketball at Harvard and went on to medicine at Harvard and Columbia. Abby has said Beth set the academic and athletic bar for the rest of them. Her older brothers and sisters played everything. She watched, then she copied, then she outscored the age group her mother had put her in. By eleven she was on the boys’ travel team, because her mother could see the gift and refused to let it sit in a smaller room. She scored 27 goals in her first three games of organized soccer and later said she was not sure whether she found the sport or the sport found her. A lot of it, early, was attention. She wanted her parents to look.

Her mother gave her the lesson that outlasted the goals. After a third game in which Abby had refused to pass, her mother asked why. Abby said the point was to score the most goals. Her mother told her that path would make her lonely, and that none of her teammates would want to be her friend. From then on she has said she prided herself on giving the ball away and building the people around her. She calls that group a wolf pack. It was the beginning, she has said, of a life of gratitude. The youngest of seven already knew what a team was. Soccer just gave it a field.

The Job and the Exit

At the elite level she has said nutrition stops being a plan and becomes a lifestyle. You do not eat well because a World Cup is on the calendar. You eat well because the muscles have a job in the morning. Her version of that, in season, was three hours a day on the field or in the gym, and one real day off. If the field session was long, the gym stayed light. If the field was lighter, the gym went after power and endurance. She hated squats and did them anyway, because the legs that won those balls in the air were not an accident. She liked arm work more than a forward is supposed to, curls and chest press, because it made her feel good. Before games she wanted a solid sandwich on 100 percent whole-wheat bread. If the road trip ran out of bread, the day felt wrong. She loved a steak on the grill and a huge salad. She has said she is a decent cook and owns a smoker she actually uses.

The recovery was less glamorous than the goals. Naps were a regime she brought out of the playing days and never gave back. She has said she can wake up early because she knows the afternoon will give the hour back. After she retired she kept the nap, added a cold plunge in an inflatable tub in the garage, and a sauna when the day allowed. On Sundays in Los Angeles she has described coffee around six, then a novice surf at El Porto, north of Manhattan Beach. She paddles, falls off, watches dolphins, and does not pretend she is a waterman. The ocean is the point. The ankles are why the run went away. She has said she can no longer run the way she once did, so the work became walking, lifting what the joints allow, and being careful with the plate, because a playing body does not stay a playing body just because you remember it.

She has also been honest about the other recovery, the one that was not a nap. Off weeks, across a fifteen- and twenty-year career, she raged. Not in camp. In the gaps. Five days of seven when the schedule opened. Prescription medication arrived as the injuries did. In 2016, the year after she retired, a DUI arrest made the private bill public. She has called herself a recovering professional athlete for the decade since, and she has stayed sober. The goals did not protect her from that year. The team did not either. She had to build a different locker room.

The Minute That Still Has a Scoreboard

The competitive piece did not retire with the number. On her Instagram, and on the show she makes with Julie Foudy, Welcome to the Party, Wambach has been posting the kind of work that used to live inside a training camp and now lives on a Peloton Tread+. She and Foudy, another national-team captain who knows what a locker room sounds like, get on the tread and settle it in one-minute bursts. Sprints. Incline. A Minute to Win It that is half joke and half the old edge. The clips are short. The point is not.

She has said she can no longer run the way the national team required. The ankles filed that complaint years ago. The tread gives her a place to push without pretending the joints are 25. A minute is long enough to tell the truth and short enough to survive. Incline does the work a full-field sprint used to do, without asking the same question of the lower leg. Foudy is the teammate in the frame, which matters more than the belt setting. Abby spent a career learning that a goal scored alone was a lonely kind of goal. A one-minute challenge with a friend is the same lesson in a garage or a studio.

If you want the version an IDNTY athlete can run, steal the shape and leave the brand at the door.

One minute on, one minute easy, six to eight rounds. Walk the easy minute if the ankles are loud. If you have a tread, start the work minute at a pace you can hold without bargaining, then add incline before you add speed. If you do not have a tread, the same minute lives on a bike, a rower, or a hill. The rule is the one she and Foudy keep playing on camera. Somebody is watching, even if it is only the person who agreed to do the minute with you. Do not negotiate the interval. Pass the effort the way she finally learned to pass the ball.

What the Day Looks Like Now

The life after the whistle is a marriage to Glennon Doyle, a podcast they make with Doyle’s sister Amanda called We Can Do Hard Things, books, and a Hermosa Beach house where the garage holds the cold tub. She still talks about the wolf pack, because the youngest of seven never really left a team. She just had to find one that did not require a finish in extra time.

A week built from what she has actually described, cut for a former player who still wants a standard:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Forty-five to sixty minutes of strength. A squat or a sit-to-stand if the knees are negotiating. A hinge. A press. A row. The arm work she liked, curls and a chest press, because liking a lift is not a sin if you still do the ones you hate. Two or three hard sets. Leave.

Tuesday and Thursday. The engine she can still own. A walk long enough to matter, or a bike if the ankles are loud. One of those days, drop in the minute challenge. Six to eight rounds, one hard, one easy, incline before ego. One day a week, if the body allows, a run with the watch off. She has said she loves taking the heart-rate strap off and running not for time and not for exertion, just to get the blood moving. If running is finished, the walk is the session. Do not romanticize a joint that has already filed its complaint.

Saturday. Something that is not a workout and still counts. Water, if you have it. A paddle. A novice surf. The point is to be in a place where the old identity is not the only one in the room.

Every day. A nap if the morning was early. She kept that from camp and she was not embarrassed by it. Protein at the meals that used to be team meals. A real sandwich if that is the ritual that makes the day feel like yours. Vegetables in volume. A steak if that is the grill you actually use. At the elite level, she said, nutrition is not something you switch on for a tournament. It is the lifestyle. After the tournament, the lifestyle is the only part you get to keep.

Cold at the end of a hard day, even if it is a shower. Heat if you have it. Sleep like it is still on the training report.

The Line She Left the Sport Holding

She has said she was put on the planet to be an athlete, and she has also said that considering retirement is like flirting with the reality of what is coming, which is why so many players only start the real thinking at the exit. When you are a pro, she has said, life is narcissistic. Everything relates back to you and how you play. When you get out, you have to become mindful of what is around you and how you affect it. She wanted to be validated as a person more than as a player, and she has said that balance was hard.

The line she has carried since is the one former players need more than the goal tally. Failure is not something to be ashamed of. It is something to be powered by. She told the Barnard graduating class that the moment you step off a podium is the moment you start preparing for the next championship, and then she had to learn what the next championship was when the bracket was no longer being printed for her.

“Sometimes you have to go through hard times to get to the good stuff.”

“Nobody is offered a World Cup.”

“It’s not pressure. It’s responsibility. We put it on ourselves.”

“I’ve always been motivated more by negative comments than by positive ones. I know what I do well. Tell me what I don’t do well.”

“As an athlete, you are literally programmed to endure a specific amount of pain.”

The last one is the dangerous gift. The pain was useful when the game had a whistle. After the whistle, the same programming will talk you into a week you do not need, or into silence, or into a bottle. She has spent the years since pointing the programming at harder, quieter things. Sobriety. A marriage. A podcast that asks people to do the hard thing without a crowd. A cold tub in a garage. A one-minute tread challenge with an old teammate. A walk the ankles will sign off on. A wolf pack that does not require a roster.

Your Playbook

You were probably not the youngest of seven, and you probably did not score 184 times for your country. The structure still transfers.

Keep a team. Pass the ball. Her mother was right that a scorer who will not share the work ends up lonely, and loneliness is a terrible recovery plan.

Train the hours you have, not the hours you miss. Three focused days of strength and two of engine work will beat a fantasy camp you never start.

Steal the minute. One hard, one easy, six to eight rounds. Incline before speed. A partner if you can find one. The scoreboard can be that small and still count.

Do the lift you hate. She hated squats and still won the ball in the air.

Eat like the tournament is not coming back. Whole food. A ritual you can repeat on the road. Protein and plants before nostalgia.

Recover on purpose. Nap. Cold. Heat. A Sunday that includes water and does not include proving you are still sixteen.

Tell the truth about the off weeks. If the gap between seasons was where the wheels came off, the gap after retirement will be wider. Fill it before it fills itself.

Ask for the note you do not want. She wanted to be told what she did not do well. That is still a usable coaching cue.

Failure is information. The missed chance, the year that went public, the ankle that will not run. Power, not shame.

She has said the minute you step off the podium is the minute you start preparing for the next championship. The next one may not have a trophy. It still has people who need the ball, and it still has one hard minute you can choose not to skip.

Abby Wambach’s goals made her famous. Her passes are what made her a legendary teammate. And, the minute on the tread is proof she never stopped competing.