Managing Stress through Exercise

Being active not only improves your quality of life, it also can boost your endorphins, the “feel-good hormones,” and improve your mood. Exercise enhances blood circulation to the brain, which benefits your health and provides you with an enhanced sense of well-being.

Exercise is a type of external stress that builds resilience to future stress, while internal, emotion-based stress tends to make us feel rundown and defeated. Most forms of exercise—from yoga to walking to strength training—can help you build resiliency. Exercise decreases the body’s sympathetic “fight-or-flight response” and promotes a parasympathetic state of rest and digestion once the workout has ended. Instead of staying tense and anxious, exercise helps the body relax, even after a tough workout.

When the body recovers from stress, it becomes stronger. Like strength training, where weight is progressively increased, the body becomes more capable of handling larger amounts of stress. If stress levels from work, home, and commuting remain the same, your body’s capacity to manage other stresses (like those from exercise) is enhanced. The more often you exercise and stay active, the more it will positively affect your life.

Taking Advantage of Stress Management

Check with your doctor/healthcare provider before starting any exercise program if you haven’t worked out consistently for a while. Start small and build up over time. Walking and hiking can be one of the easiest and least expensive ways to get in exercise every day. Many gyms, like VASA, offer low impact cardio and class exercise options so you can continue to work out as the weather changes. Start with fifteen to twenty minutes of constant movement and add intensity and extra time as you get accustomed to moving more often.

Pick Activities You Enjoy Doing

If you hate cycling but enjoy watching your favorite TV show while you use the elliptical, do that! The biggest factor that will help you keep a more consistent routine is finding things that you like to do versus forcing yourself to complete exercises you dread doing.

What Gets Scheduled Gets Done

Mark out time in your schedule several times a week—daily, if possible—to move your body in some way. Workouts can include a variety of activities and should fit into your lifestyle and ability.

No matter what the source of stress may be, taking time away to work your body and refresh your mind is important. While the hardest part of adding physical activity is finding the time without causing additional stress, remember all the positive results you’ll feel and see with this small investment.

Gini Grimsley

About the Author

Gini Grimsley is the Director of Fitness Product for VASA Fitness where she creates cutting-edge fitness programming for VASA’s clubs across eight states.