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Men's Rugby pre-season attending a workshop
Spotlight on support service providers-Oli Whitton (time management)
Oli Whitton is a current University of Exeter PhD student who works as a Stength and Conditioning (S&C) coach as well as delivering time management and goal setting workshops to our HPP athletes and squads. With term 1 now underway and our HPP athletes working to balance their sport and academics we caught up with Oli to get his thoughts on the challenges facing student athletes and how they can best manage these demands…
1) What do you enjoy most about working with student athletes?
"In my work as a as an S&C coach and through delivering sports psychology workshops, I have a clear understanding of the demands placed on student athletes. I am constantly impressed at the levels of passion, hard work and dedication that they demonstrate. Alongside this as the students progress through the academic years it's a real pleasure to see them grow and develop as people. This makes working with student athletes a really rewarding and enjoyable process".
2) Why is time management so important for student athletes?
"Student athletes face considerable challenges trying to balance their sporting and academic demands. The demands from each will fluctuate throughout the year with emphasis continually changing on factors such as training, competition schedule, assignments and exam periods. Inevitably there will be times of overlap, not to mention other considerations such as employment and social commitments. Implementing effective time management strategies has been shown to reduce factors such as competitive stress and can be invaluable when trying to organise and keep up with a hectic schedule".
3) If you could give an incoming 1st year student athlete one piece of advice to manage both their sporting and academic commitments what would it be?
"Try to be organised from the outset with clear goals of what you want to achieve and how you're going to achieve it. Enjoy the journey and learn from it wherever you can!"
All athletes on our High Performance Programme competing in one of our 9 focus sports get access to a comprehensive support services package including S&C, physiotherapy, workshops, lifestyle mentoring, performance analysis as well as sports specific training. Majority of our teams begin their 2017-2018 BUCS campaign w/c 9th October.
Date: 4 October 2017