For most students, this can be a very stressful time. It may be their first big exam season in university, maybe they need to ace this exam to make up for a lower mark that they got over the term. Or it could be your last exam period of university, you have applied for graduation, and you are excited to finish your classes. Whatever the reason, you should feel confident going into your exams instead of being overly stressed.
Some stress before an exam is perfectly normal and healthy, however, it is when this stress is so high that you are blanking out, freezing, and forgetting all the information you easily remembered the night before, maybe even the morning of. This is called test anxiety, which is related to performance anxiety and is not the focus of this post. It’s important to make the difference between the two before continuing.
There is always the debate among students and their friends on what the best practice for exam season is. Some people need to start studying 3 weeks or more in advance; some people do better starting a week before. Others alternate back and forth between subjects while some focus on one subject at a time.
The topic of focus today is exercise and how to can manage your schedule in a way where you can de-stress and improve your success on exams by being physically active during your study time.
Studies have found that people who take exercise breaks during their revision sessions help with memory and mental performance. Serotonin release during physical activity, especially physical activity you enjoy, helps regulate your sleep and boosts your mood. What does this do for study? You will feel more engaged with your studies and your mood will stay up throughout the day.
But that’s not it! During and after exercise, another hormone is released. Often explained as the ‘runner’s high’, dopamine release will increase when the body is expecting a reward or pleasure response from doing something. This is where we see folks stress eating during exam season because dopamine is released while they eat and study. However, to optimize the effects of exercise and peak dopamine response, we want to separate the activity causing the release. When this is done, learning and attention span increase, allowing memory to improve.
Exercise also releases another hormone called norepinephrine release. When studying after an exercise bout, we see those who got their heart rate up for 10 plus minutes had more motivation and better general mental stimulation. These two items allowed them to have more effective study sessions and, again, better memory of what they learned.
These three hormones, plus an increase in brain blood flow and neurotransmitters will improve cognitive function and help your focus better for your study sessions. Plus, a little exercise session before that 2 or 3-hour exam will also have the same effects.
Even better, these little exercise breaks can help decrease your stress levels! Doing an activity that you enjoy and feel confident doing will further decrease some of your stress to a more manageable and healthy level.
Not sure what to do for an exercise break?
If you are on campus and have our Fitness membership, join one of our group classes! We are running them until Dec 9th.
Not on campus or the times don’t work for you? Follow along with our free video library here!
Resources: