5 Factors Soccer Icon Carli Lloyd Attributes to Her Amazing Career Longevity

For an athlete considered one of the best to ever play the game, Carli Lloyd was far from a lock to make the roster for this summer’s Tokyo Olympic Games.

The two-time FIFA Player of the Year underwent knee surgery last fall, and many wondered if the world champion would be able to return to the form that saw her score a hat trick in the 2015 World Cup final and clinch the game-winning goal in back-to-back Olympic gold medal matches in 2008 and 2012.

But Lloyd uses doubt for fuel. This year, she featured in all 10 matches for the U.S. women’s national team (USWNT) and leads the team with five assists. In June, she became the oldest goalscorer in team history in a friendly match against Jamaica. And just a week later, she officially became the most senior American woman to compete in the Olympic soccer tournament when she was named to the Tokyo roster for her fourth Games. Now, she’s looking to help lead the USWNT to a comeback performance in Tokyo, as the team is fighting for their fifth Olympic gold after a disappointing loss to Sweden earlier this week in the opener.

Lloyd turned 39 years old on July 16, and she’s showing no signs of slowing down.

Off the pitch, Lloyd is the highest paid female soccer player in the world. She’s been an outspoken advocate for women’s equal pay, especially in the USWNT’s ongoing lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. It’s a passion she shares with her new sponsor, deodorant brand Secret.

“I’ve always lived an authentic life on and off the field,” Lloyd tells SELF. “And I like to align myself with partnerships that truly speak to myself and what I’m about.”

Whether it’s penning a powerful op-ed in the New York Times, or voicing her NFL dreams, Lloyd has never shied away from expressing her thoughts and promoting women’s sports. She’s also one of many female Olympians who are actively disproving the notion that you can’t compete at an elite level well into your 30s and beyond. SELF caught up with Lloyd to learn more about how she’s playing her best soccer after 17 years on the pitch.

1. Experiment to keep growing.

“Each year I’ve played, I’ve tried to break barriers,” Lloyd says. That means not being afraid to experiment and try new things, like tweaking her diet, or implementing more double workout days. Most recently, she began working with a new strength coach, Chris Halladay, after her knee injury last fall. Halladay encouraged her to embrace new kinds of training, including what she calls a “neurological-based physics approach to sports performance and movement.”

“I was a little hesitant, at first,” she says. Prior to working with him, as she mentioned on her Instagram, she stuck to bodyweight exercises and soccer-specific running workouts. Now, she works on drills that stimulate her mind and performs vision exercises, which are followed by strength exercises and movements that are related to what she needs to do on the field.

“Every movement, essentially, is a rhythm,” she says. “Everything that we do in the sport is [about] vision. You’ve got to play the ball into the net, you’ve gotta pass, but you also have to be conscious of players around you. [Halladay has] been able to help push me and and continue to to make me fit, fast, and explosive.”

2. Work out hard, but recover harder.

Lloyd says after the 2012 London Games, she knew she wanted to play for two more Olympic cycles. With age, that means she had to keep her recovery game as strong as her on-field play. And while she’s not afraid to experiment with some things, she also knows the importance of continuing with her tried-and-true basics.

“I think doing things on a consistent basis—sleep, hydration, massaging, recovery ice bath, training—has all allowed me to continue to play,” she says. “My recovery hasn’t changed.”

That also means continuing to make these basics a priority, whether she’s in season or off-season.

“I’m not taking months and weeks off at a time or eating terribly, or not getting enough sleep. It’s been constant,” she says. “I’ve really given [the sport] everything I have up to this point and will continue until I retire.”

3. Fuel appropriately.

When Lloyd reached her late 20s, she started to take a more informed look at her nutrition plan to figure out the best way to fuel for performance. Starting in 2009, she made a conscious effort to eat whole, organic foods while limiting added sugars. She also makes sure to eat enough protein, especially post-game, in order to rebuild her muscles and improve recovery.

The extra time and effort that goes into nutrition planning is worth it, Lloyd says: At 39, she feels like the strongest version of herself. By continuing to keep her fueling routine steady, she says, “you just continue to see an evolution.”

4. Play smarter.

It’s probably not surprising that after nearly two decades of playing soccer, Lloyd understands the game on a deeper level than many other athletes.

“When you’re a younger player, you just go out and you run around, and you do things a little bit more instinctually rather than studying the game, learning the game,” she says. As she progressed, Lloyd began to approach the field more tactically: studying film of past competitions to see how and where she could improve.

In doing so, Lloyd believes her game is coming together in a more effortless way.

“I can see where I want to go with the ball, two, three steps ahead, versus when I was a younger player—you’re not processing that as quickly,” Lloyd says. “So in that regard, it’s become a little bit easier. With experience and with all the games under my belt, I’ve had a lot of practice and been in different situations where I can adapt and figure out the best position to be in.”

5. Use setbacks as motivation.

Despite all of Lloyd’s accomplishments and accolades on the field, no one is ever guaranteed on a team as competitive as the USWNT. Lloyd has always identified as an underdog—and so she trains like one.

That hard-nosed work ethic stems back to her on-the-field trials earlier in her career. In 2003, she was cut from the U.S. U-21 national team, as she wrote in The Players’ Tribune in 2019. (An “under 21 years of age” team is designed primarily for the development of soccer players who might one day play on the national team.) In 2009, a year after scoring the game-winning goal in the Olympic final, her U.S. Soccer contract wasn’t renewed. In 2011, she missed a penalty kick in the World Cup final against Japan and had to prove herself yet again.

“So we worked 10 times harder,” Lloyd wrote of setbacks in The Players’ Tribune piece.

For each hurdle she’s faced, Lloyd has returned to the pitch even stronger and more motivated than before.

“I think there’s been a lot of people who say, ‘You run too much, you do this too much,’ but it’s been incredibly helpful for me, and it’s made me incredibly fit and I’m still able to play at a high level,” she says. “It’s just about always finding ways to get better.”

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