Causes of Failure of Social Gerontology Theories to Explain Sport retirement

A number of theories have been used to explain sport retirement. The purpose of this paper is to review and analyze social gerontology theories and their applicability in the field of sport retirement. This review was done during 2019-2020. Four major theories, Activity, Disengagement, Continuity and Social Breakdown theories; are reviewed with empirical results. Results showed the theories have received several criticism that can be classified in three main category: 1) the role of various factors such as resource, environment, personal characteristic and structural factors have been ignored by these theories, 2) these theories have been developed in non-sport setting that may affect their generalization to sports groups, 3) there are stark differences between sport retirement and retirement from the work force which makes it difficult to apply these theories in sport. Generally speaking, none of the theories have been able to completely capture the nature of sport retirement phenomenon and their applicability in sport has been questioned in the literature. Nevertheless, social gerontology theories have had an important role in the development of sport retirement studies and paved the way for developing new theories. So, researchers should increase their information about these theories in order to be more successful in theorizing in sport retirement, which is one the needs of this young discipline.