Your Fast Track To Good Mental Health Boost your

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Percentage of time Brits spend indoors – that’s more than 22 hours a day. Get outside more!

Prime time

How to mentally prepare yourself for a big effort Getting yourself into the right state of mind before key training sessions and races can make a marked difference to the way you perform. A new paper in The Journal Of Strength And Conditioning Research looked at the three most popular techniques pro and amateur athletes use to do this:

01/ Music: to have a rousing effect, your playlist needs to be both loud and fast, preferably with uplifting lyrics. Go for songs with a bpm of 120 or higher.

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Instructional self-talk: opt for a short piece of advice such as ‘run tall’ or ‘pump your arms’ .

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Motivational self-talk: Use ‘ you’ rather than ‘I’ and pick a few memorable words of encouragement such as, ‘You are stronger as the race goes on. ’

RUNNER’S HIGH Boost your mood by challenging yourself with difficult runs

Speed your recovery

For better mental health, throw in some quicker running

MANY STUDIE S HAVE attested to the power of moderate exercise in boosting mental health. But could even bigger gains be made by pushing yourself a little harder on a regular basis? Yes, according to a new study in The Journal Of Sports Medicine And Physical Fitness. Researchers gathered data from healthy young adults and compared their physical activity levels and cardiorespiratory fitness (using their VO2 max) with their score from two mental health questionnaires. Interestingly, they found that cardiorespiratory fitness had a greater impact on mental health. In other words, the subjects doing harder exercise had better mental health than those doing similar amounts of moderate workouts. That’s not to say all your runs need to be a challenge – adding in one or two tougher workouts a week might boost both your physical and mental wellbeing.

Mellowing with age

Bad run or race? Chill out, younger runners, and learn a lesson from your elders. A new study found that older runners are better than younger ones at maintaining an ‘optimal emotional level’ after a half marathon. In short, they don’t tend to get as angry after a bad result and, as such, are less stressed. The study, published in Cognition And Emotion, looked into the effect prolonged physical exercise had on attentional bias, the tendency to process certain types of stimuli over others. The young people in the study showed attentional bias towards anger, while the older runners showed a bias away from anger. Although there’s nothing wrong with feeling angry after a disappointing run or race, it’s perhaps better to look at it as an opportunity to grow: it’s not win or lose, but win or learn.