Study like a runner not a ballet dancer

This round, I've been trying to think about preparing for the MCAT the same way I would train for a marathon.  The problem is I know almost nothing about training for marathons.  I do know that academics and athletics share common features: in order to do well, you must put in the work; overtraining can lead to reduced performance and burnout, and you need to take active rests.  Even though I've been an athlete for most of my life, I did not learn any of this in my years of ballet training.  In fact most ballet dancers (and teachers) are kind of idiots when it comes to smart training as the notion of extremes without logical reason is passed on generation to generation.  In my years of idiocy, I failed to recognize things like two technique classes in a day are not necessarily better than one (your ankle hurts? maybe you need to take even more technique classes! 6 per week just isn't enough), taking a break might actually enhance performance every once in a while (but if I take a week off, it'll take a month to get back what I lost!), and eating will benefit your training (I'm hungry, but if I eat the sandwich, then I'll get fat).  In my undergraduate studies, I went with my ballet dancer mentality of "more is always better" even though, like in ballet, this theory was never actually demonstrated to work, except in rare cases.  I failed to recognize that there is a threshold that anyone reaches and once you surpass that threshold the only way to go is down where you eventually crash and burn in a pile of burnout.  Taking a rest, stopping to recover for half a day, and admitting that I needed to cut back was not hard core, and clearly, only hard core people win.

My folly was to fail to recognize that smart people are actually the people who win.  What I have learned in graduate school, is that you must train in cycles, that there need to be active rest periods, and that one needs to plan so that peak performance occurs when it counts.  (Thank you exercise physiology course work) So, after a very long tangent, we come by to my attempt to approach my MCAT studying like one would approach a marathon: gradually increasing with variations along the way with efforts culminating in peak performance.  In addition to this overall approach, I've recognized that cross training is also important.  When I was dancing, I did Pilates and later, yoga (I never said I was a complete fool).  For the MCAT, well, I also do yoga.  The problem with academia is one can get trapped in this mindset of "I can't lose that hour, I need it for studying!!"  Often, this thought comes after 3 hours of being largely unproductive, except for maybe in updating my facebook status a bunch of times and watching videos of cute puppies on youtube.  For anyone, if this starts to happen, it's much better to take an hour, get some exercise (or eat ice cream, I don't know, to each his own).  In my case, yoga is perfect cross training for academics.  I physically get exercise, I stretch out all the parts that start to hurt after 6 hours of not leaving the couch except to pee and eat, and, most importantly, I take my mind to a place of calm focus.  For an hour I decisively do not think except for maybe the occasional "you want us to hold that for how long?!" or "action potential...gah... shut up brain...... downward dog..... the equation for volta....shhhh.....baby cobra...."

In summary, this method has appeared to work.  It still takes a level of discipline and hard-coreness (After all, the hour study break isn't beneficial if it turns into a half day study break) but it is much more manageable.  Rather than hopping between extremes of intense study marathons and drunken binges, as per college, or doing nothing but studying or working all the time (even though studying often consisted of looking at one page for a really long time and thinking about how much I didn't want to be studying), a la last year's MCAT disaster, I am trying to combine an effort walk the middle path (yes, I'm using honkey yoga language, I'm a yoga instructor, what do you expect) with the sensibility of a runner doing smart training.