My Story

I started medical school thinking, “I am going to be doing one of the hardest courses at one of the most reputable universities. Keeping on top of work is going to take up all my time. I’m not going to have time for anything else”. I prioritised work over everything but still wanted to keep exercising to keep up my health. In first year I tried out for the college football team and to my surprise I made it into the 1st team. I really liked football but being in the 1st team meant I had to train three times a week and play a match every weekend. I kept it up for one week before deciding it was taking up too much of my time, time that I could have spent studying. So I stopped playing football and instead started going to the gym causally. This was much better, it only took up 5 hours of my time a week. This gave me more time to work and it paid off, I passed the year with a 1st. I was over the moon when I got my results but thought to myself, that was an intense year. I tried to do the same thing in 2nd year but I was nowhere near as efficient as I was in 1st year. I was starting to get bored of working so hard and this showed in the decrease in quality of my revision. To make up for the decrease in quality I pushed for quantity in hours. Again I got a 1st at the end of the year. However this time the same happiness wasn’t there. I thought to myself, that was one of the most boring years of my life. I started off really enjoying medicine but by pushing for a particular grade at the end of the year I was starting to get bored of my course. I realised I was letting this grade, a number, define me. That’s when I decided, I didn’t want to put all my eggs in one basket.

I joined the powerlifting club in my third year of University. The first thing I did was participate in a internal competition with the rest of the club members. I had never done anything like this before. It was so much fun and everyone was so supportive. I was so impressed with the weights people were lifting and I really wanted to be a part of the club. I asked around for advice about how to train and quickly started following a training programme. I started to see an increase in my strength almost immediately. Motivated to get better at powerlifting I was training more consistently, making sure my nutrition was wholesome and started watching videos to learn more about the sport. By the end of the year I competed at the British University Championships with the rest of the team. I didn’t do as well as others but nevertheless I was extremely pleased with the progress I had made in a year, especially considering I was new to the sport. At the end of the year I got a 1st in my exams but unfortunately my research project let me down and I ended up with a 2i overall, just missing out on a 1st by 1%. I was upset in the moment, mainly because of the pressure I put on myself to get a 1st. However I was very happy with how the year went. On reflection I still did well in my exams, I got into a new sport, competed at a national level competition and made new friends. 

Looking back I was most content during 3rd year as that was the year I had the best balance of work, health, and social life. Up until third year I had always achieved the highest grade possible and so it was the fear of not continuing to doing so that was motivating me to work. Not only was this an unhealthy mindset, it was not a sustainable long term approach and it was holding me back from finding other things I would enjoy. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t upset that I didn’t get a 1st in third year. However, it did not take me long to get over that and when I did get over it I realised that I would rather have a good balanced year than to put myself through a difficult year for one day of happiness, results day. I took this approach into my clinical years and those have been the best years of my degree. During these years I was efficient with my time, and when I say efficient I mean I spent time only doing things I enjoyed. I enjoyed the time I spent learning medicine because I didn’t work until boredom, I kept up with powerlifting and continued to see progress, and I still had time left over so I decided to try new things (e.g. our clinical school Pantomime). I continued to get better at Powerlifting and my biggest achievement in sport was finishing 3rd at the British Men’s Junior Classic Championships. That’s my story, and now I’m going to share my tips for how you can succeed at a University level sport whilst keeping on top of Medicine.