Today, elite athletes form an important social group, and the non-sport facets of their lives matter as much as their sports performances. However, there has been little empirical research on the lifestyles of elite athletes. Therefore, this study aimed to develop knowledge about the Iranian elite athletes’ lifestyle. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach in two phases. Glaserian grounded theory was used in the first phase, and thematic analysis was used in the second phase. Participants of the first phase included 19 sports experts, such as sports sociologists, sports psychologists, and sports coaches, who were selected by purposive and snowball sampling methods for holding unstructured in-depth interviews. The data were simultaneously analyzed using a set of open, theoretical, selective coding and memos. The codes were grouped into three different categories with different natures. The emerged theory advanced our understanding of the lifestyle shaping structures of elite athletes, lifestyle indicators, and even professionalization of their lifestyles. According to the results, the Iranian elite athletes’ lifestyles include indicators, such as professional mindset, competencies, life vision, financial literacy, responsibility, consumption, leisure, personal issues, and religious behavior. Subjects of the second phase were 44 Iranian athletes in the national levels who participated voluntarily in the study. The data were analyzed by thematic analysis method, and lifestyles typologies were identified. Based on results, five dominant lifestyles among the Iranian elite athletes were identified: consumerist, easy going, socially useful, profit-oriented, and professional. Finally, the features of each lifestyle were discussed.

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This paper presents a qualitative study conducted using the Glaserian grounded theory (GT) method. Glaser’s approach to GT differs from Strauss and Corbin’s method, which is more widespread. There are some differences in the focus on participants’ concerns, staying in the research environment for an extended period to discover participants’ main concerns and the emergence of a basic social process around the core category. The Glaserian GT method was used to understand elite athletes’ lifestyles. Two groups of athletes and non-athletes were recruited for the interview as the sample. The core category was determined through iterative coding, memoing, theoretical sampling, and theoretical sorting. There were overlaps in these phases; they fluctuated back and forth and were not as clear-cut as they could be. Results showed the lifestyle components of elite athletes. Besides identifying participants’ main concerns, the results also demonstrated how to address them over time. It is a category of a basic social process named “professionalizing.” Lastly, the steps of creating a concept map are explained practically, which in addition to sports science scholars, can be considered by researchers in other fields.