Training

Should you keep lifting during IB exam season?

13 July 2026 · 5 min read · by the Xero team

Every April, student-athletes face the same pressure — from parents, sometimes from coaches, mostly from their own panic: "pause training until exams are over." It sounds responsible. It's usually a mistake. The right answer isn't your normal program and it isn't zero. It's a deliberate maintenance block.

Why zero backfires

• You lose your best stress outlet at peak stress. The month you most need somewhere for the tension to go is exactly the month people cancel it. The nervous energy doesn't vanish — it reappears as 2am scrolling and restless desk hours.
• Structure collapses. For trained people, sessions are the skeleton of the day. Remove them and days don't gain four study hours; they lose their shape, and the studying gets worse.
• Sleep degrades. Physical fatigue is the cheapest sleep aid there is. Sedentary exam weeks reliably produce lying-awake-rehearsing-formulas nights.
• The gains you fear losing survive weeks; the routine doesn't. Strength holds remarkably well for 3–4 low-volume weeks. The habit of showing up is far more fragile than the muscle.

The maintenance block

Cut volume hard, keep intensity moderate, keep the schedule sacred:

• 2–3 sessions per week, 40–45 minutes. Enough to preserve strength and routine; light enough that recovery costs nothing.
• Full-body basics only. A squat or hinge, a push, a pull — 2–3 working sets each at a weight around 70–80% of usual, nowhere near failure. Walk out feeling better than you walked in; that's the entire target.
• No PRs, nothing new, no soreness experiments. A max attempt gone wrong or a new movement's DOMS is a completely unforced error during exams.
• Anchor sessions to the exam timetable, not to feelings. Late-morning paper? Train the afternoon before. Two-paper day? That's a rest day. Write it down when the timetable comes out.

The morning-of question

A light session the afternoon beforean exam helps most people — better sleep, calmer morning. Training the morning of an exam is riskier: some people arrive sharp, some arrive flat. Exam season is not the time to run that experiment for the first time. If you already know a morning walk or short session settles you, keep it. If you don't know, don't find out on Paper 1 day.

Tell your coach the truth

If you compete, this conversation happens in March, not by ghosting practices in May. Every coach has heard "exam block" before — most will happily program three light weeks. What burns the relationship is disappearing. The IB is two years long; the sport can flex around one month of it, but only if someone plans the flex.