Top tips to decompress after a busy exam period

Are you feeling deflated after exams? Don’t worry, this is natural due to the rollercoaster of emotions and broken sleep you’ve dealt with over recent months.

To help get your spark back and relax after exams, Sports Psychology Consultant Henry Walshe talks through five tips to try.

We’ve also included a helpful list of these tips below!

Healthy sleep routine

Your body needs rest and recovery after this stressful period. Get back into a healthy eight-hour sleep routine, this helps you get your two hours of REM sleep which is essential for emotion regulation.

If you need to nap, have a mid-afternoon nap, but try and keep this to a maximum of one hour whilst maintaining your eight hours sleep.

Clean your room

Remove your Post-it notes and spider diagrams from your room. If you keep these up, your brain will continuously associate your room with exam stress.

By cleaning your room, it will look tidy, fresh and organised. So, when you go into your room, you won’t be reminded of exam stress.

Reward yourself

Self-gratitude has been researched to activate the amygdala and hippocampus to produce positive emotions and feel-good hormones.

Therefore, congratulate yourself on getting through exam season and go for a meal, out to the cinema and celebrate with friends.

Get outside

You have been stuck inside far too much over recent months revising and sitting exams. 15 minutes outside has been shown to reduce cortisol levels (the stress hormone) and increase dopamine and serotonin levels (the feel-good hormones).

So, go for a long walk, a bike ride, or to the park with friends and family – enjoy the good weather.

Try not to fall into the binge-watching series habit, as this is just spending more time inside.

Get back into your hobbies

For the good of your exams, you will have had to sacrifice your hobbies to make time for revision.

Ensure you get back to spending time on things you enjoy such as your swimming, diving, water polo, artistic swimming or other activities such as running and socialising with others.

When returning to the pool, you don’t need to jump back into intense training, try easing yourself in with relaxed sessions as you build up to full training.