By Drew Altizer, CEI Intern
Finding Time. If you’re still worried about not having enough time, try working out before school. It sounds daunting considering how early students have to wake up these days for school anyway, but once you’re in the habit of doing it, it will become routine. For example, I’m by no means a morning person, but for the sake of sport, I would force myself to get up before school and participate in ‘breakfast club.’ This was held Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at 6:30am at my high school and was a mix of strength and conditioning and Crossfit.
As hard as it was to physically get out of bed those mornings, I realized how much more energy I had in my morning classes just after those workouts and knew I had to do it. I had to set an alarm across the room from my bed so that I would have to get up to turn it off. I had to set my alarm later than I normally would so that I would have to hurry to get ready and wouldn’t have any time to hit the snooze button. It was terrible, but only for about 5 minutes. Once I was up, I was up; and working out in the morning gave me much more time in the evenings to work on schoolwork. I ended up going to bed earlier and shifting my whole sleep pattern back an hour or so. Most importantly, the more I did it, the more I got used to it.
References
Asociacian RUVID. (2013, June 12). Sport at competitive level improves the academic performance of secondary education students.
Park, I. S., Lee, N. J., Kim, T.-Y., Park, J.-H., Won, Y.-M., Jung, Y.-J., et al. (2012). Volumetric analysis of cerebellum in short-track speed skating players. Cerebellum 11, 925’“930. doi: 10.1007/s12311-012-0366-6