In the last police fitness test tip we spoke about training intensity and the importance of allowing your body time to recover. We discussed how to work out your training schedule to ensure you’re leaving enough time between workouts for your body to be able to train again at full intensity again. Training before this time will not allow you to gain the most benefit from your effort or intensity will be below its full capacity.
To stick with that theme, I wanted to talk about the week leading up to your official test on Sunday morning. Now it’s going to be different for each individual so the best thing to do is to experiment to see what is going to be best for you. A word of warning, don’t experiment in that final week, you need to find out what works for you well in advance.
If you are attending our Police Fitness Practice Test session, this is the perfect opportunity for you to experiment, train nice and hard during the week with either Wednesday or Thursday as your last hard training session. This will leave you with 2-3 days to recover and you can then gauge on Sunday if you’ve left yourself enough time to recover and be fresh for the test. Like I said, this is something that you will need to experiment with but as a rule of thumb, we recommend at least two full days to recover.
So if you’ve been following our police fitness training programs and working hard for a number of weeks or even months and you can still work hard during the final week up to Wednesday or Thursday but make sure you rest on Friday and Saturday to allow your body to replenish it’s energy stores so that you are 100% fresh and ready to go on Sunday morning.
I’m nervous and feel I should be doing something
If you find yourself getting a little nervous on the Friday or Saturday and you’re feeling like you haven’t done anything for a couple of days which is quite natural if you’ve been training hard for a few months leading up to this point, then there are a couple of things you can do to blow off some of those nerves.
If you find yourself in this situation then get outside for some fresh air and head out for a walk, maybe take the dog for the company just make sure you keep it nice and easy at a low intensity. If you desperately need to something that will make you feel your working on the fitness test, then do some technique training, again at low intensity. You could do some beep test timing drills or set up the Illinois Agility and run through the sequence a few times, again just make sure you stick to a nice easy pace just so you can blow off those nerves.
Visualization is another important element to consider
We don’t really think about visualisation much because we are usually focused on the fitness side of things, however, after putting so much time and effort into your training to get to this point and finally being so close to your goal, visualisation can be helpful.
You could visualize all the preparation training you have done, the outcome you desire as well as run through each of the tests in your mind seeing yourself succeeding and passing each and every test component. There is a famous Chinese proverb (I think) that goes something like “If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right”.
In Summary
If you have put in the hard yards, followed the right training program and given it your all, then by ensuring you give yourself enough time to rest and visualize your desired outcome you are well on your way to success.
Okay, so that’s it for this police fitness tip, good luck to everyone who is at this stage and we hope you got something out of this tip.
