Balancing School and Sports: A Game Plan for Student Athlete Success
Everyone needs balance. Whether that’s in the literal sense of testing out a yoga class to work on your body, or learning how to divvy your priorities up on a day-to-day basis to be more efficient, balance is key to creating success. In the world of a student athlete, navigating throughout a week—let alone a day—of practices, games, travel, academic work, a social life, sleep, and proper nutrition can be like playing another sport in and of itself.
School demands time. Athletics demand time, too. It’s imperative that, as a student athlete, you develop a strategy that gives you the keys to winning every day, week, month, and semester. In this article, we’ll go through some tips to help you find balance in your busy life of academics and sport. That might look like incorporating study blocks, utilizing support systems, creating an order of operations based on priorities, and more.
Prioritize Tasks Based on Scheduling
We know what the term “syllabus week” might mean to a lot of you in school. It’s the first week of the school year or semester. During this week, you’re going over the curriculum for each class, which means you (most likely) won’t have any heavy schoolwork to do those first few days. It also means that you’re going to get a rundown of what to expect in terms of when quizzes, exams, and other important markers. You’ll find something similar when your sport’s season comes knocking, too. Usually, you’ll receive some information about practice, games, and travel schedules.
You’ll have some advanced notice of the test, quiz, assignment, practice, game, and travel scheduling, so use it to your advantage. If you see that there’s time before or after something athletically while your midterms come creeping up, schedule some extra time for yourself in advance to study. That could be going right from practice to a local library or coffee shop to study, giving yourself the bus ride to and from a game to look over some notes, or anything else you can find.
Maybe during the season you’re able to get homework or smaller tasks done while traveling for a sport, but once playoffs and a potential big academic test seem to coincide, you feel stuck. Should you prioritize locking in for the postseason or locking in for the test? Well, the answer is both, but having one on your mind while trying to complete the other can be a huge distraction.
Time blocking your days can help avoid cramming, too. Cut your day into slices, where maybe two hours in the morning is class, then another few hours you’ve got practice or a game, and then take another few hours to prioritize studying.
Develop Study Habits That Stick
Giving yourself the keys to succeeding as a student athlete shouldn’t be as daunting as it may seem. When it comes to studying, it’s the small things that’ll help you stay locked in. Here’s a few things that you can do while you settle in to study:
The Pomodoro Technique: With this 25-minute studying method, you’ll work on time management by focusing on your work for 25 minutes, then having short breaks to reset and get back into it. Instead of giving yourself the daunting idea of having hours on hours of studying to do and trying to cram it all into a day or so, this helps break things up while keeping things fresh. Begin studying for 25 minutes, then once time is up, give yourself a five-minute break. After completing four cycles of this, extend the break time to 15-30 minutes for that round.
Find study spots: Your desk is probably a fine spot to continue to study, but getting away from it and changing environments to study once in a while might help you increase your productivity. As a student athlete, this might look like taking your notes on the treadmill, in the cafeteria after practice, or anywhere around campus. Give yourself a mental refresh at a coffee shop, enjoy the quiet at the library, or find a park to work at.
Limiting screentime: If you’re working on a computer, there’s only so much you can do here. But you can still limit the distractions of social media, phone usage, and more that can take away from your studying. You might be able to set physical limits on apps through your phone’s settings, or set timers for yourself to refrain from using certain ones or your phone altogether. You might even think of giving yourself specific times in a day to focus on a “digital detox.”
Treat Academics Like Your Training
When it’s time to practice, you practice. On game day, you play. You’re in the gym training in between it all, too. Why not treat your studying like you do your sport? When you go into a season, you set goals for yourself. Scoring “x” number of times. Averaging “x” number of points. Winning “x” number of games. Do the same for academics.
This can look like setting studying goals every week like a certain amount of time you’d like to spend total in studying, a certain number of pages you want to get through in a given time period, or looking through a number of notecards at a time. You can also use a studying method that switches things up consistently when you get into it. Let’s say you’re going to study for two hours. Cut that time up and do something like 15 minutes on notecards, a five-minute break, 15 minutes on reading, a five-minute break, and then 15 minutes going through class notes followed by another five-minute break. Repeat this process twice. A workflow like this can offer a change of pace like the ones you’ll find in practice and game scenarios.
Another thing you do in sports? You ask your coach and trainers questions. You pick apart details of your game. You study film—everything. Bring that same mentality to your academics. Look for opportunities to connect with your teachers and professors either before or after class and ask questions. Find time to get tutoring in. Just like in sports, you’re going to have outlets in academics that are here to help.