Exercising in any form has a big role to play when it comes to relieving stress. This is why health professionals constantly recommend patients to do this since it is beneficial in many ways. Simply moving your body and reading is a form of exercise that can help your health.
Regular exercise allows you to maintain general mental and physical wellness, preventing bodily illness and benefiting mental health. It can make you handle negative life happenings calmly and mindfully. It helps you manage stress, reduce tension, and help treat mild anxiety and depression.
Intense Physical Exercises
Medium- to high-intensity physical exercises allow you to exert the buildup of stress by short bursts of intense seconds. You can do them and it’s almost as if you’re already releasing the actual negative feelings and thoughts that have been bothering you for the past week or two.
1. HIIT Workout
Experts say HIIT workout is an effective remedy whenever you need to let out a lot of stress from your being. Doing this kind of workout and including a bodyweight exercise can definitely reduce your stress. A combination of intense cardio and resistance workout uses minimal equipment so everyone can do it. You can do this for at least 30 minutes in a wide outdoor space.
2. Strength Training
Doing exercises by improving physical strength is also a good way of de-stressing. You can use a barbell, dumbbell, or a kettlebell, and a band for your legs. Strict presses, banded rotations, and windmills are examples of workouts that you can do with this.
Strength training is an excellent way to release a form of bad energy without having to count or calculate any numbers or percentages. Whether you’re doing it in a gentle or intense way, as long as you’re doing it regularly, it can greatly help you move really easily and reduce your chances of injury.
3. Outdoor Run
If you don’t want any strength, HIIT, or core workouts, outdoor running is the simplest way to go. Running for at least half an hour with different intensities can be enough to start your productive day. You can do it outdoors, it’s easy. All you need is a pair of joggers and pleasant music and you’re good to go. You can go back home with a refreshed mind and body. Do this regularly and you can reduce your chances of a wide variety of illnesses.
Gentle and Relaxing Exercises
Exercising doesn’t have to be intense all the time. If you’re one of those people who are not into many physical activities, you can do these simple and gentle exercises to relieve stress.
4. Daily Walking
Simply making time to walk every day can prevent you from illnesses like heart disease and diabetes. This way, you can have a relaxing moment and burn calories at the same time. It also helps you reduce the chances of joint pains as you’re aging. Walking daily also diminishes your chances of having mental illnesses when you get old, like dementia.
5. Breathing Exercises
Breathing exercises like 4-7-8 and mindful breathing are examples to help you when you want to reduce stress in a relaxing way. All you need is to find a comfortable spot you can position yourself in your home. You can use different anti-anxiety or mindfulness apps to guide you on breathing techniques.
If you feel like this is lacking, you can do exercises that are both physical and mental, such as yoga and online tai chi or qigong. You can take online classes for beginners so an instructor can guide you as a start. Yoga doesn’t have to be intense and there are simple yoga poses you can start on.
6. Mental Exercises
This can simply mean talking your emotions out to someone you trust or a mental health professional or a counselor.
You can also start by doing it yourself, embracing your solitude, and having the power to control your own mind. Keeping a journal and writing down your experiences, thoughts, and feelings is a good way to do so. Meditation is one of the most recommended mental exercises that can benefit both the mind and the body. It already helped many people relieve stress and gain a different perspective.
You can also combine this with progressive muscular relaxation, which can help you sleep if you’ve been tired from fatigue and sleeplessness.
Whether you have an intense fitness lifestyle or prefer gentle movements, having to exercise regularly is a great way to improve your well-being. Depending on how you feel at the moment, you can release stress either by relaxing or adrenaline-pumping exercises.
