How To Use Exercise To Manage Stress

You've probably heard that you can use exercise to manage stress. Long-term consistent exercise is great for making your body and mind more resilient to stress, and can significantly reduce your stress over time.

To learn more about long-term exercise to manage stress, check out my full article: How Exercise Can Make You Feel Less Stressed.

But you can also use exercise to manage stress right now, in the moment. This is the strategy I want to share with you here.

I've personally be using this strategy to help me deal with the increasing stress I've experienced over the last few years.

What's been driving my stress? Having two young kids. Let me tell you what the most stress-inducing sound in my life is right now: the sound of one of my children having a tantrum.

The strategy I'm about to share with you has made a huge difference in how I deal with that stress and other types of stress.

How Stress Works

The stress response, which you might know as the “fight or flight” response, is a way for your body to mobilize the resources it needs to survive a threatening situation.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work:

You’re faced with something life-threatening. Maybe you’re walking in a field, minding your own business, and you notice a lion following you.

In a millisecond, your brain starts the stress response. It sends signals to your organ systems via neurotransmitters and hormones, redirecting resources that you’re going to need in order to take action.

To get through this, you need to either fight the lion or run away. For that, your muscles will need a lot of oxygen and fuel. Nonessential processes like digestion and reproduction will need to take a break, because they’ll just get in the way right now. You’re also going to need an incredible amount of focus and decision-making.

Your body and brain become ready for action. Your heart rate goes up, your breathing increases, your senses are heightened.

Then, it’s time to act. You either fight or you run, hopefully you survive, and then the threat is over. Your brain sends more signals to tell your body it can relax, and things settle back to normal.

That’s the normal course of the stress response. You spend most of your time relaxed at baseline, and then there’s a sudden and severe threat which skyrockets your stress response, and then you go back down to baseline.

This is what our bodies and minds are evolved to deal with.

Now let’s look at our current lives. Most of us are no longer in danger of being attacked by lions. Instead of physical stress, we deal with mental stress. We're bombarded by deadlines, emails, financial worries, family issues, the constant news cycle, social media...

That type of stress affects your brain and body in exactly the same way as a physical life-threatening situation would. The stress response hasn’t changed, only the stressors (the things that are stressing you out) have.

These days most of us never get to the stress peak, but more importantly we never get back to baseline. Our stress response is always slightly activated.

Your heart rate and blood pressure are always a little elevated. Your metabolic and hormonal systems are always under a little bit of strain. They never get a break, and this goes on for years and years and years.

The Physical Feelings Of Stress

What happens in your body when you feel stressed or anxious?

If you pay attention, you’ll notice that you can feel your heart beating harder and faster. Maybe your chest feels tight. You might feel a little flushed or warm. Maybe you feel nauseas.

These are signs that your brain is activating your stress response.

The heart rate increase and chest tightness are your heart and lungs getting ready to send oxygen and fuel to your muscles. Blood being redirected around your body causes that warm feeling. The nausea is hormones and neurotransmitters released as part of this stress response that reach your stomach through something called the “gut-brain axis”.

It doesn’t matter that you can't fight or run away from this kind of stressor. Your body and brain only know how to deal with stress in one way, by getting ready to physically respond.

How To Neutralize Stress

So what can you do when your body is getting ready for a physical response? You can respond physically.

To neutralize the stress response, you need to "complete" the stress cycle. You need to bring your stress response up to its peak, and then allow it to settle back to baseline.

You can do that by running, jumping, or moving really fast to increase your heart rate, then stop and take some deep, diaphragmatic breaths and feel the response subside. That’s how you complete the cycle.

See my article: Are You Breathing The Right Way to learn how to do diaphragmatic breathing.

You only need to move for a few seconds to activate that response, but it does need to be a very intense burst of movement. Going for a walk, which can be very helpful for other aspects of physical and mental health, won’t quite do it.

Do something like sprint in place as hard as you can for 30 seconds, jump rope, sprint up and down the stairs, do some shadow boxing and throw some punches.

Important Note: if you have an existing health condition or concern, or if you are not already a regular exerciser, please consult your doctor before engaging in vigorous exercise. You may need to start with a less intense version of this strategy until you increase your fitness level. Do something that gets your heart rate up just a little at first, and slowly increase the intensity over time.

How I Use Exercise To Manage Stress

Lately, when I feel that stress response bubbling up, I do 5 clap push ups and 5 jump squats on the spot. I can do that wherever I am, in pretty much whatever I’m wearing.

It takes about 30 seconds and makes my heart start pounding immediately, but it’s not enough time to get sweaty. Then I lie down and breathe deeply, and those stressful feelings fade away. It's incredible.

It makes me feel better, and it also does something else important. It allows me the mental clarity to be able to respond to the situation appropriately.

When I’m in the middle of that stress response, I’m likely to get frustrated when my toddler screams at me or say something to my husband that I will regret later, because my brain is overloaded.

All my resources are going to responding to this physical threat that isn’t really even there. I'm not going to have the mental capacity to think through and measure my response, and I’m probably not going to respond in a healthy way.

But after I’ve completed the stress cycle, my mind is clear and I have those resources back. I can focus on reacting in a positive way. The stress might come back, but at least I know I’ve handled it the best I can in that moment.

I can honestly say that this strategy has made me a better parent, a better partner, a better person.

I encourage you to give this a try. Pay attention to how stress feels for you. When you realize it’s happening do a quick and intense bout of movement for about 30 seconds, then breathe deeply for about a minute. I bet you’ll feel better.