The day in a life of a D1 college athlete...

Hey, team, Alex Swenson here. Hey, thanks for joining me today. I want to talk about a day in the life of a college athlete. I talk to a lot of parents, I talk to a lot of high school student athletes and I try to drill in their head what is required of you at the next level. Okay. What is expected. Because it's very important that we go in and have a good understanding of what a day in the life looks like as a college athlete. Because the last thing that we want is to go in as a college athlete. And we are shocked, completely shocked of everything that goes on and that is required of you as a college athlete. Okay. Because time and time again I've seen this year in, a year out that a college athlete, freshman going in can get easily overwhelmed and it's just too much. Either ends up transferring or just quits in general. And you hate to see that, right? And it's just they weren't prepared for that. So I want to help prepare you of what it takes to, to be a college athlete on a day to day basis. And we're going to dive into that today. So, hey, if you get anything from this video, please select that thumbs up and like button and subscribe to my channel. I put out a weekly video. I'd love to have you a part of this community and help you along this journey. All right, let's get into it. It's easy to get caught up in the glam of being a college student athletes because we see it on TV, we see it on ESPN, we see it on YouTube or a streaming service or social media. And that's amazing. That's great. YouTube, it's more accessible to watch now than ever in almost all of the sports. Okay. And it's great because again, you can visualize yourself being on TV and playing at the next level. But it's just so important to understand that is such a small percentage of what it actually is to be like a student athlete. You're just seeing the game aspect of it. You're not seeing the workouts, the practice, the study halls, the classes, all that is involved in being a college student athlete. So we're going to go over that here today and we're going to start from sunup. All right. Which is Right now, it's 5:30 in the morning. Okay. It's important to know before we get into this, okay, that this is not every day, but these are most days, especially as we're rolling and we're in full team practice and we are in the middle of Season we are going and it is more than a full time job. But yes, 5:30 in the morning is our wake up call. Why? Because we're hitting the weights at 6am you might have heard this saying, if you're on time, you are late. And that is definitely the case in college athletics. These coaches expect you to be anywhere from 5, 10, 15 minutes early. Meaning if it's 6 o' clock workout, you're there at either 5:55 at the latest and you're cutting it close there. But I usually would show up 15 minutes to give me some wiggle room. So if there was any case like where hey, I forgot something, I had to run back to my dorm, I had a little bit of wiggle room as far as to get through that. Hey, you can apply that in anything in your life. Give yourself some wiggle room there. And again, it's always better to be early than late. That is never a good situation. It's not a good look. And you will get chewed out if you are late or frankly if you're walking into the meeting or the workout rather at six o' clock, the coach has already started talking, you're walking in, you are late. Okay? So always remember, show up early. Okay? So workouts will usually take you up to 7:15, 7:30 right around there. Usually hour and 15, hour and 30 minutes. And you are working out anywhere from three to four sometimes, depending on the season, five days a week. Okay. And you are hitting lower body, you are hitting core, you're hitting upper body, you are hitting back. I mean you are hitting everything. You're doing agility, you're doing conditioning, you're. And conditioning is something else at the college level. No doubt about it. So that will take you up, let's just say 7:30 and 7:30. Hey, you need to go get something to eat. So you can either go to the cafeteria, you can go back to your dorm. If you have food there, you can go to the shake spots. Usually there's some shake spots or coffee spots on campus where you can go to. But you want to fill your body with good nutrition, especially after a good workout. Ok. And then that will take you up to class. So classes depending on on the day will be at either 8 o', clock, 8:30 or 9 o'. Clock. In college you're going to start around that time. You might have heard some students in college, they can start classes at like noon. Okay. And then they have a noon o' clock class, they have a 1:30 class and then they have a 3 o' clock class. That is not the case for an athlete because we're going to be practicing in the afternoon so you're going to have all your classes typically in the morning. There are some exceptions to that depending on your major and we can get into that a different time if you have any questions. But most of your classes are going to be in the morning and that will take you up to about 1230 ish. OK. On a typical day, again this will fluctuate depending on the day. 12:30 you have lunch. This will take you up to practice, which is usually around 2:30, give or take 30 minutes. Okay? So you have a little bit of downtime, you get some food in your system, ready to go, get charged up for practice. And remember, if practice is at 2:30, you do not want to be showing up right at 2:30, okay? Because that means stretch starts at 2:30 and we're rocking and rolling. You have a lot to do before you start practice, meaning you got to get dressed. You might have job responsibilities that you have to do on the field, okay? You might have to talk to a coach. So always you want at the latest to be showing up the field 30 minutes before practice, okay? I typically would just grab lunch and take it to the field, hang out in the locker room, talk to my buddies and in the locker room and get prepared. So I'm not feeling anxious of making sure I'm there, you know, at the right time or if anything were to come up and I'm not there. That's not a good situation there. So Practice starts at 2:30. That will take you up again. The day can fluctuate a little bit depending on what the practice plan is. But let's just say 6:30, four hour practice, okay. With some meetings in there as well. It might be before, it might be after. So you're done at practice at 6:30. Well then now you have study hall, okay? Have study hall going in because we need to maintain a certain gpa. Now typically if you are a sophomore, junior or senior, okay? And your GPA is at a really good level and the coaches trust you, okay? And the academic advisor trusts you, they won't require you to do study hall. But typically freshman year everybody has to do study hall. And that can go anywhere from an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and a half a day, okay? So you have to get that in after practice and at 6:30 you're getting done at 6:30. So you're going to study hall at 7 to give you a little bit of leeway. There, maybe grab a quick bite to eat. So it's from 7 to 8:30, you're in study hall. Okay. After that you are pretty much free to do what you want to do. But that takes you up to 8:30. So day starts at 5:30. All right. The end of the day is done at 8:30. So that's a quick glimpse of a day in the life of a college athlete. And the thing is, the next day you're doing it all over again. Okay. It takes a lot of commitment, but I promise you it is worth it. But just prepare yourself. Visualize yourself going through that stuff and being disciplined to what you need to be doing and creating good habits. And you can start those habits right now in high school. Okay? Hey, if you got anything from this video, please like that like button and subscribe. I would really love for you to be part of this community. Ask any questions down in the comments below or email me. I would love to help you through this journey and go from there. I'll see you in the next video.