Veterinary school comes with an intensity of study that is difficult to explain to those who have never experienced it. The first round of exams you face as a student can feel like an unending assault that you only just manage to be prepared for. Then, it repeats, over and over again. In many programs, the intensity increases with every year, meaning that it never seems to get easier. Yes, you are learning some really cool stuff, but sometimes you feel like there is no time to simply be a human. During orientation and throughout the semesters, you are going to have licensed therapists inform you about the importance of relaxation, sleep, exercise, relationships, and spirituality, but it feels like any time spent doing anything other than studying results in disappointment with your academic performance. Study time, contrary to how it feels, is not a zero-sum game. Time spent away from studying can assist you in learning and boost your grades while lowering stress and improving overall well-being if, of course, it is spent right. Exercise is as close to a miracle drug as we have found, with it improving nearly every aspect of your life. Today, we will talk about the benefits of exercise, time-efficient ways to implement an effective exercise regimen, and address some common misconceptions along the way.
Exercise is a Panacea
The results are in and have been for decades. Exercise improves the health of virtually every system in your body. Outside of the more well-known benefits to your musculoskeletal and cardiovascular system, it can also decrease the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, infectious diseases, many common cancers, injuries, and improve mental health (Benefits of physical activity | physical activity basics | CDC). Even just 10 minutes a day of moderate or intense physical activity makes a difference, with more time (to an extent) simply resulting in more benefit. The CDC recommends that most people get 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity, but also clearly states that there are still plenty of benefits for those who do less than the recommended amount. Exercise can even reduce the number of days spent suffering from migraines in most people! Resistance training seems to provide the largest reduction, but all forms of exercise provide this benefit if they are done at least at a moderate intensity (Feigenbaum, 2024). The health benefits of exercise are difficult to overstate and apply universally to almost all people. For highly stressed Veterinary students, however, the mental health benefits of exercise are even more important.
The Mental Health Benefits of Exercise
In my experience, people tend to think of exercise as an additional stressor to their day. This is technically true, but the short- and long-term effects it has on your body far outweigh the temporary stress caused by it. Here’s an analogy: Think about how studying affects your test scores. Being relaxed while taking a test allows you to think more clearly and, probably, do better than you would if you were stressed. Sleep is known to be an important part of memory formation, a requirement for getting the full benefit of studying, and it improves in quality when stress levels are low. Studying itself, however, is a stressor that directly improves your grades, to a point. When one studies too much, to the point that it interferes with sleep or causes extra anxiety during an exam, their grade may suffer. It seems that, as far as studying is concerned, there is a balance that must be struck between healthy levels of stress and relaxation. Exercise is the same way. If you spend a few days a week exercising, challenging yourself, and pushing your limits, there are amazing benefits in store for you. If you become obsessive, pushing beyond what you are currently capable of handling, it can become unhealthy. The good news is that you are likely able to handle far more than you know.
Exercise is a wonderful way to improve your mental health. We tend to think of physical and mental health as separate things, but they are tied very closely together. Numerous studies have tackled this, and it is not controversial to say that exercise is one of the biggest levers that the average person can pull to improve their mental health. Vet school is stressful, and, in my experience, pushing your body will quiet your mind.
Mental health among college students has become a major concern, especially in STEM fields and rigorous professional programs. When compared to similarly aged non-college students, college students report higher levels of stress, anxiety, and depression. Because of this, a team of English scientists set out to find the link between physical activity and mental health. In “A Systematic Review of the Effectiveness of Physical Activity Interventions for Improving Mental Health and Wellbeing in University Students,” they found that exercise consistently reduced symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression, and had smaller effects on some other psychological problems. It seemed that the modality of exercise matters here, with team sports and Pilates being the most effective. If you’re curious, video-based at-home exercise tended to have the smallest benefit overall, but was still beneficial (Malagodi et al., 2025). It seems that more traditional exercises, like running, biking, and resistance training, also have large, positive effects on mental health. In line with the CDC, it seems that low intensity and frequency still result in positive results, although moderate intensity and frequency yield better results. At very high intensities, the mental health benefits decrease, although they do not go back to zero (Singh et al., 2023).
Personally, when I prioritize going to the gym, even when I am exhausted, I feel much better. It helps me keep a piece of myself and maintain an identity outside of vet school. When an exam was looking particularly intimidating, knowing that I was strong and that I am someone who does hard things helped maintain my confidence. When I asked Dana Kusch, a student in Oklahoma State University College of Veterinary Medicine’s class of 2027, how exercise benefited her during vet school, she had this to say: “I would say the single-most benefit I have experienced personally is the boost in self-confidence. Having struggled with body image issues, not only do I feel stronger and more fit, my appearance has improved tremendously. Because of this, my anxiety around both food and body image has reduced drastically. I still struggle somewhat, however that little fire that still burns often keeps me disciplined when motivation falls.”
Dana has a history of being physically active throughout college, and now focuses primarily on bodybuilding, getting well over the recommended minimum amount of resistance training. For her, exercise is not just a way to be healthy, but a way to clear her head and maintain her desired level of muscularity.
Exercise Improves Your Grades
The most common reason that I see for not exercising consistently among vet students is that time spent exercising is time not spent studying. The logic follows that this would hurt your grades, and that if grades are your priority, this is a bad trade-off. Luckily, it seems that this is less of a trade-off than most of us think, and it is more of a “have your cake and eat it too” situation. While no studies have been done on the effect of exercise on the grades of Veterinary students, they have looked at the next closest thing: human medical students. In Saudi Arabian medical students, there was a large correlation between high GPA and physical activity habits (Al-Drees et al., 2016). To support this, I found a systematic review going over studies on university students in America, Europe, and Asia across disciplines. Most of the students were in STEM-related fields, especially medicine, nursing, and dentistry. It showed a moderately positive effect of exercise on GPA (Rosales-Ricardo & Cáceres-Manzano, 2024). It seems that, essentially, if you have healthier exercise habits, it somehow makes up for less time available to study. I bring this up to emphasize the point that prioritizing exercise does not require sacrificing GPA. Balance is the key to success in vet school, and allowing your physical health to suffer in an attempt at improving your grades does not work out so well.
A recent graduate from Oklahoma State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Kaila Rowe, stated that she does not think she could have done as well in vet school without focusing on the gym. “It really helps keep me grounded and focused. Even if I do poorly on an exam or perform less than ideal clinically, I always have my mental and physical health to fall back on, which has prepared me to handle those hardships. Physical fitness teaches you that hard work pays off, which flows into every state of life including vet school. I was able to maintain a 4.0 through all of vet school and I honestly do not think I could have without the discipline and mental strength that going to the gym has brought me.”
I do not disagree that discipline in one aspect of life influences another. Discipline begets discipline, and achievement in your fitness can help motivate you towards the necessary actions to accomplish your non-fitness goals. If I had to guess, I would also imagine that the benefits to mental health, focus, and sleep would provide at least a modest boost to your grades.
Implementation
We have established at this point that exercise is not only going to enhance your vet school experience but will also likely boost your grades. Actually acting on this knowledge is the hard part. After all, most everybody knows that exercise is healthy, but most do not know how to make a workout plan that is practical. After all, expecting someone to spend three hours a day at the gym is unrealistic, especially for someone in the busiest period of their life. Luckily, that level of commitment is completely unnecessary.
Resistance training is very flexible in both method and timing. The most common, straightforward form of resistance training is weightlifting, but resistance bands and calisthenics are also perfectly good methods of training. Many forms of group training, such as CrossFit or HYROX, incorporate both cardio and resistance training into their programs and often have times that work well with our school schedule. That being said, if you are like me, you prefer a solitary approach to resistance training. My preferred method is powerlifting, where the trainee focuses more on increasing strength across three lifts, the squat, bench press, and deadlift, rather than focusing on building muscular size. Part of the appeal to me is that it is a solitary sport, where I do not have to cooperate with others if I am too exhausted for social interaction. Other approaches are just as good for providing the benefits mentioned, but finding a method that you enjoy is the most important part. If you enjoy your training, you are less likely to skip it. To that end, consider finding someone to start training with you. Having a friend is, of course, fun, and having someone who will hold you accountable will push you to continue on your low-motivation days.
Now that you have decided to begin resistance training, how often should you do this? It is common to see people who go to the gym five, six, or even seven days a week. This is only necessary for extremely experienced trainees who require large doses of training to achieve any adaptation. Most people can get away with much less than this. The CDC recommends adults train each muscle group twice per week (Benefits of physical activity | physical activity basics | CDC). This is a great recommendation and allows some flexibility in how you get there. Most people will find two full-body focused sessions per week to be the most time-efficient. Using mostly compound exercises, such as squats, pressing movements, and lat pull-downs, allows you to work multiple muscle groups simultaneously and save time. It is very reasonable that training in this way will only require you to be at the gym for 45 minutes each session. Isolation movements, such as bicep curls or calf raises, work great, but are unnecessary if you are pressed for time. I recommend adding isolation exercises only if you want to prioritize that muscle group and have time to spare.
Some weeks, you will have enough time for five or six gym sessions per week, but some you may only have time for one. Consistency is key, but allowing yourself some grace during tough weeks will help this be something you stick to for years. In fact, improvements in strength come so easily as a beginner that only doing one session during busy weeks may not slow your progress down at all. Beginners have been shown to gain strength for weeks when working out once a week with very light weights. In this case, light weights meant that each participant could have easily used almost double the weight for each exercise (Behm et al., 2023). An important caveat is that, as you become more experienced, you will require higher doses of training to continue to progress. Even still, it has been shown in the literature that even highly experienced athletes can still gain strength in a movement by doing one to three sets per week of that movement, as long as the sets are done at a high intensity (Androulakis-Korakakis et al., 2019). The good news is that the required dose is still something you can almost certainly hit every week. A classmate of mine, Keeci Gammon, recently began strength training. When asked how she juggles both school and the gym, this was her reply: “I use the gym as my mental break at the end of my school day before going home to study. I try to go 5 days a week and get in strength and/or cardio, but when the week has a heavy exam load, and I need those 2 hours to study, I allow myself some grace and might drop back to 3 days that week.”
Cardiovascular exercise is incredibly important to your health, but often less focused on. The CDC recommends 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio, or 75 minutes of high-intensity cardio per week. This can be split up into as many or as few sessions as are convenient for you. The exact mode seems not to matter either, with running, cycling, swimming, etc. all working well. I tend to do my cardio after lifting weights and do a mix of moderate and intense cardio to keep it interesting. I have also found that cardio is a great time to listen to lectures or podcasts about the subject you need to study. Something about the repetition of cardio allows my brain to focus better on a podcast about the drier subjects we study. This method allows some studying while increasing your fitness, and using NotebookLM to generate podcasts from my notes saved me on multiple exams. CrossFit and HYROX training, which often have this level of cardio exercise built in, so doing more is likely unnecessary unless you would like to. Similarly to resistance training, if school requires more of your time, a temporary decrease in cardio training frequency will not be detrimental to your health or progress.
Exercise is one of the most health-promoting activities you can participate in. It boosts nearly every health metric and leaves you feeling strong. The sedentary nature of Veterinary school leaves us in desperate need of intentional exercise. Finding exact exercises to include in your plan is easy to do using resources like YouTube, and exploring many types of exercise modalities can help you find some that you enjoy. Sometimes, finding the time and energy to exercise will be difficult, but as a vet student, you are someone who can do hard things. Balance is key, and the implementation of exercise will help you find a balance between school and life.
SOURCES:
- Al-Drees, A., Abdulghani, H., Irshad, M., Baqays, A. A., Al-Zhrani, A. A., Alshammari, S. A., & Alturki, N. I. (2016). Physical activity and academic achievement among the medical students: A cross-sectional study. Medical Teacher, 38(sup1). https://doi.org/10.3109/0142159x.2016.1142516
- Androulakis-Korakakis, P., Fisher, J. P., & Steele, J. (2019). The minimum effective training dose required to increase 1RM strength in resistance-trained men: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Medicine, 50(4), 751–765. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-019-01236-0
- Behm, D. G., Granacher, U., Warneke, K., Aragão-Santos, J. C., Da Silva-Grigoletto, M. E., & Konrad, A. (2023). Minimalist training: Is lower dosage or intensity resistance training effective to improve physical fitness? A narrative review. Sports Medicine, 54(2), 289–302. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40279-023-01949-3
- Benefits of physical activity | physical activity basics | CDC. (n.d.). https://www.cdc.gov/physical-activity-basics/benefits/index.html
- Feigenbaum, J. (2024, June 22). How does exercise affect headaches?. Barbell Medicine. https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/how-does-exercise-affect-headaches/
- Malagodi, F., Findon, J. L., Gardner, B., & Dommett, E. J. (2025). A systematic review of the effectiveness of physical activity interventions for improving mental health and wellbeing in University Students. Journal of College Student Mental Health, 1–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/28367138.2025.2566914
- Rosales-Ricardo, Y., & Cáceres-Manzano, V. (2024). Effects of physical exercise on academic performance in University Students: A systematic review. Health Professions Education, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.55890/2452-3011.1174
- Singh, B., Olds, T., Curtis, R., Dumuid, D., Virgara, R., Watson, A., Szeto, K., O’Connor, E., Ferguson, T., Eglitis, E., Miatke, A., Simpson, C. E., & Maher, C. (2023). Effectiveness of physical activity interventions for improving depression, anxiety and distress: An overview of systematic reviews. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 57(18), 1203–1209. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2022-106195