Quite often students begin the year in a casual stride and who is to blame them? After all they have just come off holidays (about  1½ month’s worth). I come from a sports training background and I can tell you that an athlete who wants to perform well will not take two months off their training year. The repercussions are too great as they will lose too much form and have to work way too hard to get back to square one.

A dedicated rugby player will take one month off and during that time will be maintaining his/her aerobic level of fitness with moderate exercise. When January comes around he/she is ready to start full swing on improving their strengths, building on fitness and working on skills. That is how you stay ahead of the pack.

I often wonder why students don’t undertake the same planning when it comes to academic performance. Most students and parents of students are willing to let the achievements of the final months of the previous year disappear through resting the brain after the school year. The brain does not need that much time to recover. In fact that length of time of recovery is detrimental. The last month of knowledge learned prior to exams has been lost and has to be relearned in the first month of the new year!

During long Christmas holidays many students maintained their academic conditioning by attending the Tuition Room at Ferny Hills.  They used their academic coach (their tutor) to work on their weaknesses from last year while others used the time to get a head start on the subject matter they knew was coming this year. These guys were staying ahead of the pack. Is it worthwhile? You bet it is. They will go into the new year confident and stress free. They have locked in with their coach who is helping them to perform at their peak