By Cyril KimbiFor the uniformed concours — police, gendarmerie, customs, the military academies — there is a stage that written preparation ignores entirely. Candidates with strong papers are eliminated at it every year, and almost always for reasons that eight weeks of ordinary work would have prevented.
Why this stage eliminates strong candidates
Two reasons, and both are avoidable.
The medical examination catches conditions nobody knew about. Vision, hearing, blood pressure, dental issues, old injuries. Some are disqualifying, but a substantial share are simply correctable — and correctable months in advance, not in the week before.
Fitness is trained too late. Endurance responds to training over months, not weeks. A candidate who begins six weeks out arrives injured or underprepared, because the body adapts on its own schedule regardless of motivation.
The practical conclusion: get a general medical check-up early in your preparation year, not near the examination. It is the highest-value hour in this entire article. If something is found, you then have time either to treat it or to redirect your candidacy to a concours without a physical stage — which is a far better outcome than discovering it on the day.
Building fitness without injuring yourself
The commonest mistake is the opposite of laziness: doing far too much in week one. Enthusiasm produces shin pain, a strained knee, and three weeks lost.
A structure that works over roughly twelve weeks:
| Phase | Focus |
|---|---|
| Weeks 1–4 | Base. Easy running you can hold a conversation through, three times a week. Build the habit, not the speed. |
| Weeks 5–8 | Add distance gradually, plus bodyweight strength — push-ups, sit-ups, squats — on alternate days. |
| Weeks 9–11 | Introduce timed efforts at the distances your examination actually uses. |
| Final week | Reduce volume sharply. Rest is part of the training, not a break from it. |
Increase load by small steps week to week. Pain that persists after a day of rest is a signal to stop, not to push; a stress injury in week nine ends the attempt entirely.
Train the actual test
General fitness is not the same as passing a specific standard. If the test involves a set distance against a clock, run that distance against a clock. If it involves a number of repetitions in a time limit, rehearse exactly that.
Candidates routinely discover on the day that they can run comfortably for thirty minutes but have never once run the required distance at the required pace. Those are different capacities, and only one of them is being measured.
Find the standards in the official notice for your examination and year — the gendarmerie, police and customs guides explain where each is published. Never train to a standard someone told you about.
Sleep, food and the things that are not training
Recovery is where adaptation happens. Training hard on five hours of sleep produces fatigue rather than fitness.
Eat enough — candidates sometimes try to lose weight rapidly before a physical test and arrive weak. If weight is genuinely a factor, address it over months through consistent training, not through restriction in the final weeks. Drink water through the day rather than only at sessions.
Keeping the written preparation alive
The written paper still decides your rank among everyone who passes the physical stage. Physical training is not a reason to stop revising, and it does not need to be: an hour of running three times a week is a small share of a study week, and it tends to improve concentration rather than compete with it.
Schedule running at the times when you study badly anyway — early morning or late afternoon — and protect your best hours for the papers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the physical test scored or pass-fail?
Usually eliminatory. Check the official notice for your examination and year.
When should I have a medical check-up?
Early in the preparation year, so that anything correctable can be corrected.
How long does it take to get fit enough?
Plan three months. Six weeks tends to produce injury rather than fitness.
Can a strong written mark compensate?
Not where the stage is eliminatory. You have to pass it.
Does training harm revision?
Moderate regular exercise generally helps concentration. Exhausting sessions do not.
