Expectedly, as a student athlete you will have a lot on your plate: it is very important to structure your days wisely to keep on top of both University assignments and your training regime
Practice prioritizing work in order of importance: it may be beneficial to sequence events in the upcoming week in order of importance. For instance, if you have a report due on Wednesday, ensure that it is completed before you attend Tuesday nights training session. It can be tempting to complete lower priority/easier tasks first, but this can cause burn out before tackling work of higher importance, compromising your results! Try writing a list of tasks to complete for the week on Sunday night and order them to ensure adequate effort is going into each task and nothing is accidentally missed along the way.
Develop self-accountability: this means taking responsibility for your actions and your life, learning from your mistakes, and quickly recovering from any impulse to blame others, ignore problems, and hide from your own shortcomings. To develop self-accountability, try to resist the temptation to skip tasks on your to do list for something preferable. At the end of the day, you are a student athlete, not an athlete student! By doing so, you are positively reinforcing to yourself that avoiding important tasks leads to reward, risking falling into bad habits.
The importance of down time: in order to perform both academically and athletically, you need to put yourself in a position to succeed. A lack of sleep and excessive stress is detrimental to performance. By having regular periods of down time, and a regular bedtime your body will get into a healthy routine of rest, which is equally as important as working- it is all about balance! Aim for 7-9 hours of sleep a night to maximise academic and athletic performance.
Communication: ensure you are in frequent communication with your lecturers, coaches and teammates. Often commitments can collide, and your teachers are here to help you juggle these tasks. If you are struggling to keep up with everything on your plate, don’t hesitate to reach out to the people around you- we are here to help!