Let me ask you a question. Do you row? If yes, let me ask you another question. Are you in school? If yes again, you want to read this article because I’m about to tell you the tricks to not only excel in rowing but in your mock, public or in-school exams. Trust me: you can have it all.
Rowing. It’s a sport like no other. Early morning ergs. Evening water sessions. Thousands of kilometres; millions of strokes; streams of sweat and tears given towards perfecting the simple rowing stroke. Once you start, there’s no doubt about it that rowing becomes your life. But that’s the beauty of it. All this hard work pays off when you have that gold medal hanging around your neck, or that PB in the notorious 2k, or that GB all-in-one. But, once exam year starts, on top of the fatigue, exhaustion, DOM’s you may experience from rowing, you also have to be thinking about revision and coursework and university applications. As the year progresses, the pressure in your life seems to increase and increase and increase. This is why if this is you, you need to start preparing now! Here are my top 5 tips to excel in rowing and exams.
Tip Number 1 – Buy a calendar and write down all the races coming up this year. Plus, all the deadlines you need to meet in school. Once completed, you can have the pleasure of crossing it off. This works as it makes you aware of upcoming races and deadlines. It definitely helped me during my exam years because once written down, it would no longer dwell in the back of my mind, and I could then focus on the things I needed to do daily. To be completely honest with you: this was a life saver!
Tip number 2 – Give yourself monthly, weekly, daily goals. What do you want to achieve every day, every week, every month? Include goals for all aspects of your life, not only limited to rowing and academics. At the start of every season, I would create 3 goals that I wanted to achieve in rowing. They have to be realistic but don’t be afraid to be ambitious. Give yourself the goal of beating your 5k PB by 3 seconds or completing 2 essays a week for History or even have the goal of watching one movie per week because I know how stressful life can get! It’s something to work towards, but don’t worry if you don’t quite hit your expectations. It’s all about making small, incremental improvements.
Tip number 3 – Make your recovery, downtime a priority. Life can become very overwhelming when we have many things to do and many expectations to achieve. I know exactly how you feel. This is why during my school years I focused on nailing my physical and mental recovery. Read a book. Watch a movie. Stretch. Eat that bar of chocolate. It is all about allowing you to work and perform at your highest standard throughout the whole year. Your physical recovery is very important, but students most often neglect their mental restoration. Don’t let revision and rowing overtake your life. Always have something else planned in your day that fulfils you and makes you happy. For me, this included reading a book and going out with friends.
Tip number 4 – Don’t be scared to work hard and put in the work. We all know of people who seem to excel in everything that they do. Best 2k. Best grades. Many universities fighting to get them. But you can become that person. There are no secrets to becoming the best. It’s all in the time and effort you are willing to put in. How bad do you want to achieve your goals? How much do you want to achieve your predicted grades, your ambitious 2k, your gold medal? There is no easy way. No short-cut. Be prepared for it to be hard because nothing in life is easy. When it comes, embrace it and let it feed your motivation to achieve your goals. You can do it. Anyone can.
Tip number 5 – Whatever happens: don’t quit. I know the feeling of getting everything wrong and failing. It’s not easy to get back up and carry on. Instead of letting the failure pull you down, use it to spark that fire inside of you that motivates you to prove everyone wrong. Remember to always keep turning up.
Good luck to all of you as you prepare for exams and the season ahead. The long winter period is about to commence so be prepared and most importantly have fun!
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