Motivation and health guide for opponents who have to study in summer

If you are studying some competitions surely the summer is not synonymous with sun, beach and vacations, but it is more like the vision of a study table full of notes or a library full of books. For the opponents, the summer season can be especially hard, as it has to continue with its hard study task, and it is easy to lose motivation during these hot months.

To give a hand to all those who are still studying and working to get a place in the next exams we bring you this guide that explains how to maintain motivation, how to get a stimulating study environment and how to maintain good health to continue studying, too in the summer months. Courage, opponents!

Create a motivating study environment

The high temperatures of the summer and the fact that many of the friends are resting while the opponents have to continue studying can play a trick in these months and increase the feeling of overwhelm and stress involved in a test of this type.

Maintaining an adequate study environment is essential to continue paying: whether you study in your room or in a library, try to make it a cool and airy environment, fleeing as much as possible from the heat, which can affect our concentration and make us feel tired and heavy.

Take advantage of natural light to study, as it will make your eyes get tired much less than with an artificial light source. If you use electric light, use two spotlights (one overhead light and one direct light) to avoid shading while you study.

Do we study better in the morning or at night?

Establish a new study routine to not lose this habit, but try to take advantage of the coolest hours of the day (the first hours of the morning and the first hours of the night) to continue studying. During the first hours of the morning we tend to be more concentrated and with more energy, since we come from the night rest, and we can get more out of our study hours. The central hours of the day, when temperatures rise more, we can use them to take a break.

This is good for talking in general, but really each of us have our own study habits and different circadian rhythms : there are students who perform much more at night, when everything is quiet and they have no other distractions, and there are They are more active early in the morning, when they can take more time. The most important thing is that there is a balance between rest (the hours of sleep, which help us to fix what we have learned) and the hours of work or study.

Planning is basic to have time for everything

If you are a sure opponent you already know it, but it is worth remembering it once again: plan yourself in an appropriate way to be able to combine study and leisure time , also in summer. First of all, evaluate if the date of your exam is so imminent as not to be able to take a few days of rest in summer, or if on the contrary you can give yourself a break and leave for a few days the notes and books.

To combine leisure activities, such as training and sports, with study hours generally gives good results. It helps us reduce stress and anxiety levels and encourages us to remain firm in our day-to-day study.

The nutrition of the opponent in summer

Maintaining a good diet, also in summer, is important for all students. As we have said on occasion, there is not a fixed number of meals that we have to do by obligation, being more important that we look at the quality of the nutrients we eat in each of the meals we make.

The periods of more stress or anxiety, such as the summer months while we are opposing, may predispose us to cravings for “junk food” such as buns, sugary ice cream, sweets, etc. Faced with these stressful situations, the brain demands a quick reward, and one of the ways to get it is through these sugary and fatty products , less healthy options than we could wish for.

In these cases, knowing how to distinguish between emotional hunger and physical hunger is important to maintain an orderly and healthy diet. Running away from the obesogenic environment that surrounds us and having healthy options at hand to eat and snack between meals (basing our diet on food and not on processed products) is essential to be able to maintain a good diet, even in summer.

How do I hydrate in summer if I am studying an opposition?

On the other hand, we must not forget our hydration : as always, water is the best option when moisturizing, at any time of the year, but even more so in summer. We can flavor it by adding mint leaves, pieces of fruit, preparing our own homemade lemonade or consuming cold infusions (homemade ice tea with a few slices of lemon is easy to prepare and we can have it prepared in the fridge).

In summer it is tempting to use energy drinks to cope with fatigue and to keep us more awake , but remember that the main ingredients of these drinks are usually caffeine and sugar. Of the sugar and its harmful effects for our organism we have spoken long and hard; Caffeine, on the other hand, if we consume it excessively can affect our central nervous system and increase our blood pressure, besides causing irritability, anxiety or insomnia. The amount of caffeine per day that we are recommended not to exceed is 300 mg, the equivalent of three cups of coffee.

In summer, do not stop moving

If you are studying an opposition that involves physical evidence (such as the National Police Corps, for which we gave you the keys on how to train each of the tests) you will know that neither in summer, despite the heat, you can stop training .

Although your oppositions are purely theoretical, we recommend that you do not stop moving even in the hottest months. The sport practiced on a regular basis can make you perform more in your work (and right now studying the oppositions is your job) keeping your stress levels low and improving your ability to concentrate and your productivity .

You can also use it as an escape route to forget about books and notes for a while. Sure you can take about 30 minutes a day to devote to training, and if you have half an hour, you have a full training.

In addition, physical exercise, such as sleep, can help us consolidate the knowledge acquired during the study hours: plan that training time within your day-to-day as part of your study planning to benefit from this effect.