Personal Training without shouting in your face for eating a cookie...
In this article I will discuss various types of physical exercise and their effect on mental health. Lots of the sports are different and can be broken down into sub divisions of the sports. I want to discuss things such as 'runners high' and compare team sports.
Let's get to it.
Running
One of the most common things associated with running is 'runners high'. You run along and you're feeling great for no particular reason other than you're exercising.
Avitsland (2020) found that the higher the fitter a person cardio wise the better their mental health, bodyweight wasn't associated with adverse mental health issues. Concluded that focusing on a persons body weight or strength training may be ineffective for improving a person's mental health.
Ghorbani et al (2014) conducted a study of 200 female students in which the participants were asked to do 3 x 1 hour exercise sessions per week for 6 weeks. They investigated the relation between BMI (Body Mass Index), a person's fitness and mental health. They recorded a persons V02 max (a really accurate measure for physical fitness) and before the study they recorded an average 37.54 ml/kg/min, after the study participants achieved 59.30 ml/kg/min. The experiment group, who were doing the exercise scored greater reductions in mental health indices including depression, social function but the biggest reduction was in the sleep and anxiety category. Before the study participants scored 5.20 and after they scored 2.80. The participants who weren't exercising scored 7.33 before the study and only reduced to 6.73.
Research has been investigating using running as a method for improving mental health since the late 70s (Greist, J, H, 1979).
Grunseit (2019) Investigated the impact parkruns had on people's mental and physical health. They broke down the participants into categories based on age, gender and fitness levels. They stated for men the parkrun may improve overall health by helping to promote social connections.
Furthemore Dunlop (2008) stated that people with depressive symptoms may experience greater benefit when doing exercise as part of a group or with a fellow exercising partner due to the social aspect.
Weight training
Dziubek (2016) concluded that resistance and endurance training improved levels of depression and anxiety in patients undergoing blood dialysis. However, the weights used were only upto 3 kg and patients were doing up to 20 reps per set. This maybe due to the health condition, because they didn't really do any intensive weight training this may have been why a more significant response was detected in endurance training.
Martial Arts
From what I have seen there doesn't seem to be much support for martial arts to be improving mental health. However, I did a Korean martial art called Tang So Doo Muk Kwan in College and I did Brazillian Jiu Jitsu more recently. I would fully support and recommend a person to do martial arts to improve mental health.
For me I personally started to realise I wasn't made of glass and gained confidence in myself. I would go up against guys with 30-40kg weight advantage on me or the MMA Fighters and I wouldn't ever win but I held my own. It gave me the feeling of learning a new skill and when I pulled off a slick move or maneuver against someone I wouldn't be able to sleep at night because I was running on adrenaline. I could get my anger out rather than just bottling it up in a different way than what talking to my girlfriend would do as well.
Here is a previous blog I wrote about a similar topic.
Yoga
Kwok et al (2019) compared strength training to a form yoga 126 people. 63 did a form of strength training and the others did mindfulness yoga. The strength training had a lower dropout rate and a higher adherence rate to home workouts. However, the yoga showed a greater reduction in people's scores on the hospital anxiety and depression scale. Kwok et al (2019) commented that the results indicated Mindfulness Yoga elicited a greater reduction in anxiety and depression than the Stretching and Strength training group. In addition it was also noted that the Mindfulness Yoga had helped people perceived hardship, perceived equanimity and health related quality of life.
I have been a personal trainer for almost 7 years now and in my professional opinion there isn't any magical formula for improving mental health. It would require you to just start exercising to any level, any intensity but more than anything, to just get doing something even if you just do the press up challenge.
I guarantee it will be better than doing nothing.
Start small. Start with the most simple little activities and then build up to more challenging things.
Find what you enjoy and build on that. It might not be perfect and the experts might say yoga is better but if you like doing pole dancing fitness classes then do that because you're more likely to put 100% into something you enjoy and from that you will in turn get better results rather than doing something you don't and only putting 50% into and only getting a small improvement.
Even still some days it will be tough and life will be hard but you mustn't give up because this is part of the journey.
I am running a group weight training session aimed at building a friendly and supportive community that will empower each other.
The groups are run with no more than 5 to ensure you're exercising safely within the current guidelines and that I can give you hands on support and coaching during the session.
The exercises and intensity can be scaled to any person's fitness and capabilities.
To make a change and be join one of the five, get in touch: Marcus
Comments
Post a Comment