Jaime Marcos Redondo is a psychologist from Madrid with a long history of achieving maximum performance from his patients and clients.

Master in Physical Activity and Sport Psychology by the UAM, Jaime works as coordinator of sport projects in UPAD Psychology and Coaching, so he has specialized in his clients to achieve objectives at the highest level of elite sport.

Jaime Marcos Redondo: discovering the role of the psychologist in the competitive examinations

It is precisely this vocation to help other people achieve great objectives that has made Jaime Marcos Redondo a psychologist who, in recent years, has devoted part of his time to the field of mental training for people facing public competitions .

In order to know what this work consists of and also to discover a part of his way of assisting in these processes, we wanted to speak at length with Jaime.

Bertrand Regader: How is it similar to preparing for a competition based on physical effort?

Jaime Marcos Redondo: Precisely, in the mental training. Despite being activities that involve very different behavioral executions, the underlying psychological mechanisms involved are still the same. Motivation, activation, concentration… are variables that affect any performance that involves displaying high performance.

Normally, when we think about what it means to take a competitive examination, the concept of “willpower” comes to mind. Isn’t this concept too simplistic? What is behind willpower?

Every behavior, every effort we make, can be explained through a very general mechanism: the administration of reinforcements. Will power does not have a literal translation in technical terms, but its popular conception usually refers to the ability to postpone immediate reinforcement by virtue of working on getting a bigger but deferred one, something very counter-intuitive to these mechanisms.

In addition, it is important to work on the satisfaction and well-being that comes from meeting those small goals that strengthen the routine. Good habits and the generation of new beliefs and sensations are fundamental to work the will power.

How can we keep nerves and anxiety from becoming an added problem, instead of being an aid to addressing the mistakes we make?

Activation in general is necessary for performance. The more activation, the more performance… up to a certain point, where if we go beyond activation, the performance starts to decrease, and then the labels of nerves, anxiety… appear

The idea is to find, for each person, that optimal state of activation in which maximum performance appears and then learn relaxation or activation strategies to reach it when necessary.

What about speed-reading techniques? Do they help you perform better on theory tests?

The quick reading, like all techniques, is applicable to depending on the type of opponents. There are personality traits that make such an active reading can saturate the reader, and there are others for whom a slow reading is less appealing.

In the end, the muscles that can be trained are attention and motivation, and from there, apply the study techniques most suited to the person in front of us.

How long do you think it takes to learn to focus fully on the task that really matters, without giving in to distractions, both when studying and when taking exams? When do you notice the first results?

There are so many variables involved in this that it is difficult to establish a given period of time that can be generalized to the population. Normally, opponents have been studying all their lives and already have good concentration strategies when they come to us.

Optimization, on the other hand, is eternally progressive. In UPAD we work with tools that accelerate the process so that learning is, in some way, faster, without losing any quality along the way.

As a psychologist, what do you think are the habits that most enhance mental performance when faced with the challenge of exams?

To have a marked routine that is adapted to the personal needs of each opponent. To use a cliché, it is a long-distance race, and it is more sustainable if we find room for effective breaks and motivating activities for everyone.

It’s a hard process, but not a tortuous one. Establishing study schedules, maintaining a balanced diet (since we are in part what we eat) and physical activity will be fundamental to obtaining greater guarantees of success in the face of a competition.

And how can these habits be encouraged with the help of psychologists?

Little by little, through small short term objectives that work as small steps leading to our overall goal. This allows us to always concentrate on the next step, knowing that if we always climb the next step, we will end up at the top.

In addition, developing routines to work on attention, generating good feelings and beliefs that support these goals will be critical to reaching the final step. Working with a psychologist will allow the opponent to learn all these tools that can make a difference on the day of the exam or test.

With regard to the competitions, do you think that the importance of mnemonic strategies, which are based only on the storage of information by memory, is overestimated?

All resources that help are welcome. To become an expert on a subject, comprehensive study and the listing of variables will always help more than mindless memorization. To overcome an opposition, sometimes we talk about something else. That’s why our work is fundamental.

Many times we get opponents who use study strategies that do not fit their profile as a student. It is important first to know the needs of the opponent by evaluating their skills and then to design a plan of action adapted to their abilities that will allow them to face the opposition with the greatest possible guarantee of success.

I emphasize again that the mental factor can make the difference in achieving the goal set, hence the importance of working on it.