One of the biggest questions many students have is how to balance their passion for sport and their studies.
If your sport is integrated into the curriculum, or your college has the sports team to accommodate, it is often easier to make everything match up.
Many U.S. colleges and Universities offer sports scholarships to many professional athletes, and many professional tennis players have their routes here. Serena Williams had actually won the women’s U.S Open at the age of 17, all before even attending college. She managed to balance her studies with her tennis career, proving that it is possible at the highest level.
She was so successful throughout her career, anybody who likes
betting on sports, especially on high level women’s tennis competitions, would need to take Serena into consideration every time. She and many other tennis players perfected this balancing act at various stages for their career and this article delves into how you can do it also.
So how do you manage your tennis with college?
Weekends are golden
The weekends are when you will be able to fit in the most amount of study, and the most amount of tennis time too. It’s going to take dedication, but you have that already.
So dial it up a notch.
It is beneficial to your studies to work out before you start them. There is evidence that supports
working out before studying or working. We benefit from the motivation and the focus for the rest of the day.
But something that is even more interesting is that our information recall can be improved by working out after studying. A morning session of tennis, followed by study and then cardio in the evening, is the perfect combination.
So not only can you get in your practice here, but you can also improve your standard of learning. Just make sure that you are hydrated and eating well-balanced meals.
Time block
Become the most organized person you have ever met in your life. Time block everything in your week so that there is no space for overlaps and you know where you need to be at all times.
Time blocking can be a lot of fun and keep you on track very quickly. If you do this every Sunday, factoring in presentations, study hours, papers, and training, then you have an overview of the entire week.
Along with time blocking, create a to-do list each morning, have a maximum of three things on there, and then three items that should also be completed.
Top tip: Give yourself plenty of time to complete projects and papers by pulling the deadline forward by at least two weeks.
Procrastination
Procrastination and distractions are the killers of being productive and motivated.
If we start saying we will do something later, or tomorrow: tomorrow eventually arrives, and we have everything left to do.
Distractions come in many forms; it might be the notifications on your phone going off a lot. It might be that your social commitments are piling up, or it might be that your desk or room is a mess.
Most people are guilty of wishing to put work off until it needs to be done, but if you want to achieve it, you need to ditch this type of thinking. Instead, you will be looking for opportunities to get more studying done.
When you catch yourself procrastinating, take note of what pulled your attention away, and more a point of removing it from the equation next time.
When you are studying, use focus timers to keep you on track. These are called Pomodoro times, and they will give you a set amount of time for focus, with small breaks in between. After four small intervals, you get a long break.
A typical focus period is between 20-30 minutes, with a 5-minute break. But they are flexible, and you can set them up how you like.
Aside from that, you can also use the Do it Now technique, which Steve Pavlina advises. He says that if it takes 60-seconds or less, just do it. As well as not waste time choosing what to do - just do something. The longer we take to make a decision, the more time we are wasting doing nothing.
More time management methods have a significant impact on reducing procrastination. Find the one that works for you.
Free time
There will be the free time that isn’t dedicated to tennis or studying that comes up every once in a while - you need to decide how to use that time.
You must have some free time; it’s good for our mental health. A healthy mind certainly helps to improve the health of your performance, so listen to it.
Studying on the go
Most people attend colleges a distance from home, and it is possible to use any downtime during the traveling home or back to college to study.
Unless you have long flights, you might not have enough time to make notes or perfect your papers. But you more than likely have enough time to read and highlight textbooks.
Listen to talks on the subject of audiobooks to avoid having to carry heavy books around. Most textbooks have an audiobook that can accompany them and add a new layer to your studying. Flashcards can make studying on the go lighter and easier too.
These tactics can save you vital time that you can spend practicing tennis, therefore improving your game.
Managing your studies with an intense sport like tennis might not seem easy, and there will be a lot of early mornings hitting the ball and late-night hitting the books - but it is more than worth it.