Preparation timing for your police entrance exam

One of the most common questions I get asked is how long should you prepare for the Police applicant entrance exam. The same question can also be asked for the other stages as well.

Let’s take a look at some of the different elements that you need to consider.

Show Highlights

01:23 – Learning the Concepts
01:44 – Improvement Plain
01:57 – Reaching The Peak
02:52 – Don’t Go Past Your Peak
03:28 – Timing
04:55 – Know When You’re Ready
05:39 – Develop Your Plan
06:33 – In Closing

Get an advantage for your application – become a member today

Transcription

G’day, Russ here, Prime Motion Training. In today’s discussion, I want to have a chat with you about a common question I get from applicants about how long it will take to prepare for the police entrance exam. The same question is often asked about the fitness testing and I even get questions from applicants who might discover our programs fairly late, in their application journey, and will say, “I’ve got my selection panel interview in 10 days time, is that enough time to prepare?”
So, in today’s chat, let’s discuss those questions.

01:23 – Learning the Concepts

Okay, the first element that we need to keep in mind is time and the second element to preparing for an event and knowing how long it’s going to take to be ready for that event is your application. I’m not talking about your police application, and when is the recruiting office going to call me, I’m talking about the application of the right training structure and the application of consistent effort.

That consistent effort is really, really important. So, when we’re preparing for something that is obviously a learning curve, in the initial phase, as we’re really just trying to understand the concept, and as we understand the concepts, we’ll then start to improve. , of course, our confidence will build, and then eventually will reach our peak.

So in this early phase here, it’s really just about learning and understanding and getting our head around the concepts and around the technique and improving your technique if it’s a fitness-related aspect. If it’s an entrance exam application, it may simply be that you’re trying to get your head around formulas and things like that.

01:44 – Improvement Plain

So as we do get our head around those things, and we start to improve, we’re going to really build our confidence quickly. And when that happens, of course, we get this really nice steep improvement plain.

01:57 – Reaching The Peak

Now, if we continue on, we’re going to get to the point where eventually, we reach the peak of our performance, the peak of our ability, our potential maybe. And when we get to that stage, this is where, not so much the time, but the timing becomes really, really important. This is what I really wanted to focus on in the chat today, timing is something that athletes will put a tremendous amount of emphasis on.

You can imagine someone preparing for a marathon, and they’re starting to put in the work, they’re building up their stamina, endurance. They get to about here, and then the marathon starts. Well, they’re nowhere near their peak. They’re nowhere near their potential, they’re not going to get anywhere near their best time.

Even here, where they’ve been putting in their consistent effort, their fitness is improving, their stamina is building, it’s still not their peak. And so they’re not going to get their best time they’re capable of. Obviously, this point here is the peak, and that’s where we want to execute at that time.

02:52 – Don’t Go Past Your Peak

What happens particularly with something like an entrance exam for a police application, this could take you two or three weeks, or it could take two or three months, just depending on your current level, and depending on the application, how much time and effort you’re prepared to put in.

If we take too long, what starts to happen is, we get a little bit bored with it now, we get a bit sick of numerical reasoning and you start to forget some of the formulas. You realise when this happens, that you’ve gone past your peak and that’s a really dangerous place to be because what can tend to happen is you lose all drive then, to want to continue on.

03:28 – Timing

So the timing is really, really important. In terms of numbers… Would you say, Russ, that it’s a one to two-week phase, and then would it maybe take two to three? Wel,l how does it work? Well, how long will it take me? It’s going to depend on where you’re starting from and what your current competency level is.

If you’re already at this stage, then it may not take anywhere near as long as it would if you’re starting way back at the beginning, where you haven’t exercised for two or three years, or you haven’t picked up a numerical reasoning question for 20 years. So it really depends on where you’re starting from.

But also very importantly, it depends on the right training structure around you and that consistent effort. Consistent effort is really important. As a very general rule, which does depend a lot on your current position and your application in terms of consistent effort, but I would say anywhere from around four to eight weeks is what it seems to take most of our members to get to that point where they feel as though they’re ready for the entrance exam.

Fitness testing could be a little bit longer. Again, very much in a fitness setting, dependent on where you’re starting from. But regardless of where you started from, that’s where you’re starting from, we’ve got to accept that. But we can always put in that consistent effort and have the right training structure around us to help move us forward from wherever we happen to be.

04:55 – Know When You’re Ready

How will you know within our program, whether you’re ready? There are two points that we discuss in the entrance exam training. One is, the consistently passing, so if you are consistently passing the practise exams, in our exam application, then that’s a very good sign that you’re at that stage where you’re ready to do the exam.

The second is just how confident you feel about it. Do you feel ready? If you’re feeling ready, if you’re feeling confident, then those two things for me, would be enough for me to be pushing you along now, to get that exam done. Because, I’m very mindful, if you take too long, and we procrastinate too long we may fall off the edge of the cliff. And we’re probably better off doing it two weeks earlier.

05:39 – Develop Your Plan

In terms of planning, as you know, and just to wrap things up now, with our Victoria Police entrance exam, you know that you have to book in for your exam in advance. So when you first get going, I think a sensible approach is to book an exam that’s close, not right up to the date, but close to the three-month time limit that you have to prepare. Now, of course, that gives you 12 weeks to prepare.

And in this early phase here, if you feel as though you’re grasping the concepts really well, and you’re improving very quickly, then you may decide to pace yourself a little bit more evenly. But maintaining that consistent momentum as well, and that can be a little bit of a tricky balance. Gee, I’m going to peak too early, I might have to back off the training a little bit but maintain that consistency. Of course, the other option could be to bring your exam back to a date that’s closer, if you feel you’ve already reached your peak there.

06:33 – In Closing

All right, well that’s all I wanted to discuss in regards to timing. You can apply this to really anything, entrance exam, fitness testing, a beep test, really any skill, any event. Athletes will use time, application, and timing for really any particular type of sport that you might be preparing for.

Okay, I hope you enjoyed today’s chat around timing. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out and contact me. Otherwise, I look forward to chatting with you again in another discussion soon.

Related Posts