It’s true that losing weight, toning up, building muscle, and getting stronger are all great physical reasons to get started with an exercise routine.
And when physical improvements are achieved through exercise, it automatically shoots over to enhance our mental and emotional improvements that get reinforced with messages like, “Hey I feel great because I am seeing results, let me keep going and work even harder.”
While the physical, mental, and emotional changes can all be looked at as separate benefits achievable through exercise, they can all work synergistically together to produce superior results within a routine.
Here are 5 Benefits of Working Out That Will Make Your Mind Stronger
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Building Confidence and Self-Esteem
It is very common to see a rise in confidence when we overcome the obstacles and challenges in our path, accomplish goals we set for ourselves, and also receive the praise and recognition from others for our great qualities, and the achievements that we have earned. The more times we start to feel this rise in our confidence, it produces a constant state of higher self-esteem with everything we do.
Exercise is actually one of the easiest and best ways to achieve confidence. It can be done by establishing small exercise goals and challenges to complete for each workout. For example, lifting more weight and doing more repetitions within each workout, and or walking, biking or running a little quicker and longer.
These little confidence builders will make it easier to conquer the bigger self-esteem builders such as losing extra weight, gaining more muscle, and raising overall strength and endurance.
Decreasing Anxiety and Depression
Check out what national health organizations and medical publications share concerning anxiety and depression; the numbers of those suffering from these issues is astronomical. Even though certain cases of anxiety and depression may require direct medical supervision and attention, these numbers would drastically decrease by implementing an exercise program to counteract these effects. According to WebMD: exercise is a tool that is often neglected and not used enough to help treat and cope with these symptoms.
When we exercise, signals are passed through the body to help produce feel-good chemicals that will decrease these feelings.
By doing as little as 10-20 minutes of continuous exercise a few days a week, you can produce more of these feel-good chemicals. Some great cardiovascular exercises to get started with include walking, jogging, biking, swimming, jump roping, rowing, and stair climbing. Find something that you enjoy and get started feeling good inside too.
Increasing Energy and Focus
We have all at one time or another seen that avid person jumping around energetically during or after a workout saying, “Man I feel great,” and we are left wondering, “What is that person on?” Well, they are on exercise!
If you are feeling tired and lethargic throughout the day, the best natural remedy is to get up and get moving. The more active we are with our bodies, the more we will produce hormones that increase our energy levels. The less active we are, the more tired we will start to feel day by day. Easy ways to boost activity in our lives can consist of parking the car further away in parking lots to walk a little further, taking the stairs instead of the elevators, and standing up more when doing daily tasks that otherwise might have been done while seated.
Having optimal levels of mental clarity and focus has never been more challenging due to all of the stimuli our brains have to process, ranging from different media outlets to computer advances that are supposed to make our lives easier. Finding a product on the shelves or in the pharmacy to help us increase our focus and drain our bank accounts is also at an all-time high.
Doing more exercises that focus on balance and coordination can be very beneficial for increasing mental focus and clarity. Resistance exercises that incorporate using a stability ball, medicine ball, bosu-ball, trx straps, or use of one leg or arm at a time are wonderful ways to help produce better balance and coordination, leading to more mental focus and clarity.
Picking exercises to do in a circuit fashion that entails doing one exercise per body part and not resting until you complete one full rotation of each of those exercises, will help to invigorate and energize the body even more than having rest periods between each exercise and set.
Managing Stress and Sleep
Stress can be an evil enemy to our mind and body that will limit our results with a workout program, resulting in less motivation and less recovery from workout to workout. Higher levels of stress can also make it difficult to burn fat and have better quality sleep every day. Without proper sleep, a workout program is like having a car that only drives in reverse. Managing stress will help with sleep, and managing sleep will help with stress. Proper exercise can assist in managing and maintaining stress and sleep by way of lowering cortisol levels when working out. Incorporating stretching, yoga, and pilates exercises into a program can be simple solutions to help relax our mind and body while still working our muscles and, gaining the benefits of flexibility and the reduction of cortisol.
Paying it Forward
This could be the most satisfying and rewarding aspect that results from starting and maintaining an exercise program. It is my absolute favorite and the main reason I decided to become a Fitness Trainer. When we have the ability to come from, achieve, or transform our own place of health, we will, in turn, have so much more of ourselves to give to others. There will always be someone who is in worse health than us, hasn’t achieved the health success that we have, or simply doesn’t have the right knowledge and tools available to transform their health. This is our opportunity to step up and pay it forward; helping others improve their quality of life in whatever way we can.
These mental and emotional benefits can have the same value, if not exceed the value of the physical benefits of exercise, for motivating, inspiring, and getting started and maintaining a fitness program. And when you do work out, keep in mind that the physical, mental, and emotional benefits are working synergistically together to help achieve better results for ourselves.
Whether you notice progress physically, mentally or emotionally first, you can count on your fitness naturally improving in all areas, spurring you on to greater results.
Previously published on The Good Men Project
