What Are the Benefits of Working Out to Relieve Stress

Your daily to-do list is an encyclopedia, and your stress level is through the roof. Go ahead and scan your schedule for activities to eliminate, but add one, too. Exercise will help you to lower stress, boost focus and stay healthy. Working out not only builds muscle and endurance and carves away extra pounds, it can restore your sense of balance, calm jittery nerves and improve resilience. Regular exercise is an effective stress-buster.

  1. Break a Sweat

    • Aerobic activity delivers a successful anti-stress workout because it affects a lot more than your heart rate. "Harvard Men's Health Watch" points out that repeat aerobic exercise improves mood, cardiovascular function and metabolism. It helps you to relax, let go of stress, achieve a state of calm, re-energize and feel good. The positive results are so consistent that aerobic workouts are prescribed for clinical depression and anxiety disorders. The American Council on Exercise notes that researchers measure decreases in muscle tension, hyperactivity and jittery nerves after an aerobic session. Twenty minutes of aerobic activity, seven days a week is a proven stress-proofer -- and a single exercise session can yield between 90 and 120 minutes of calm feelings and lowered stress.

    Happy Hormones

    • The benefits of an aerobic workout for reducing stress aren't all in the mind, but they do affect the chemicals in your brain. Exercise shrinks your levels of adrenaline and cortisol -- the stress hormones. At the same time, it triggers the production of more endorphins, the pain inhibitors and mood boosters that create positive emotions, a sense of relaxation and the post-run, feel-good "runner's high." Working out stimulates more neurotransmitters than just endorphins, and all of them help to mitigate depression and anxiety, modify stress reactions to keep you in emotional balance, and promote a feeling of well-being

    Stretch Away Stress

    • Yoga is known for stress reduction and a regular class, and daily home practice could instill in you an admirable degree of calm. Forward bends and supine stretches such as Standing Forward Bend or Bridge pose soothe and slow your mind. Chest- and shoulder-opening poses like Cobra and Dolphin release tension from muscles that commonly hold it. A meditation seat such as Easy pose unlocks another tension-holding area, the hips. Child's pose and Corpse pose are relaxing breathers between more demanding poses and at the conclusion of a yoga session. Breathing exercises are part of a serious yoga study and long, slow, deep yoga breathing cuts through stress with a few inhalations and exhalations. Meditation, guided by an instructor or as little as a few peaceful quiet moments at the beginning or end of class, teaches you how to turn off your chattering mind.

    The Chill Factor

    • Walking, running and yoga involve repeat contraction-and-release of large muscle groups, which tells your brain to produce the neurotransmitters that lower stress. The rest of the benefits of a regular exercise program, one with a vigorous aerobic component, create a fitness shield against unhealthy tension and reduce your risk for chronic disease. You increase your stamina and strength, lower blood pressure and blood sugar levels, lose bad cholesterol and gain good cholesterol, raise and regulate your moods, and enjoy an enhanced self image. All of those changes help you to sleep better and to avoid obesity, memory loss, dementia, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, colon and breast cancers, fractures and osteoporosis. Being healthier involves less stress, more energy and even a slow-down in the effects of aging. Working out to work off stress improves the overall quality of your life.