Movement for Mental & Emotional Health

Moving for more than your muscles

TL;DR

• Movement practice does a lot more than change how you look

• If you’re looking to change your emotional wellbeing or mental health, moving your body is an effective strategy for doing that

• A whole bunch of research citations to back up the claims

• What to do to move your body for your emotional wellbeing

The fitness industry drives me nuts…

One of the most annoying things for me being in the “fitness industry” is the way that fitness pros talk about movement. I’m a firm believer that someone’s weight or body fat % are some of the least interesting, compelling, or worthy things about them - yet standard fitness industry marketing will focus on those almost exclusively … and maybe, occasionally, their “health”.

Fortunately, that seems to be changing!
More people are moving their bodies for mental and emotional wellbeing than for how they look. The challenge? The fitness industry primarily focuses on how to program, talk about, and facilitate movement for aesthetic, performance, and functional reasons.

If you’re someone looking to move/exercise for your mental and emotional health it can be a challenge to find reliable information about how or what to do!

What movement “does”:

You already know movement is “good” for you and your health. You’ve probably heard you should get up every 30 minutes from your desk, that you need both cardio and resistance training, and that over 60% of American’s aren’t getting the recommended amounts of either.

After 12 years doing this work: part of the problem is how we talk about fitness.
If the focus is on building a perfect body, losing weight, or running marathons many people feel it’s not “for” them.

For starters, here’s what else movement and exercise “do” for a person:

Positive Emotions

• Improved blood sugar regulation, sleep quality, and dopamine production all boost sense of vitality

• Self reported increase in positive emotions immediately after exercise & for 24 hours following ¹

• Increase sensitivity to your body’s own dopamine² (a focus hormone) and serotonin³ (happiness hormone)

Sense of Self

• Builds sense of wellbeing⁴

• Increases self compassion⁵

• Increases self control⁶

• Boosts sense of one’s vitality - the feeling they have enough energy - which is shown to benefit overall life satisfaction and wellbeing

• Greater sense of purpose in life ⁷

Mental Health

• Improves mood for those with depressive symptoms ⁸ and is significant enough to match the effect size of antidepressant medication⁹

• High intensity exercise reduces the symptoms of in-the-moment anxiety & consistent exercise decreases frequency of anxious episodes ¹⁰

Stress Coping

• Changes an individual’s perception of how stressed they are and how well they’re coping with that stress¹¹

• Gives a psychological “time out” from stresses and worries by shifting the state of the brain¹²

Concentration/Attention

• Improved ability to concentrate¹³

• Improved memory & recall¹⁴

• Improved problem solving¹⁵

In Short:

1. Movement shifts brain chemistry - making you more sensitive to your own “feel good hormones” and producing more “focus hormones”.

2. Movement helps shut down the part of the brain that is self-conscious and overworks when we feel stressed - it gives our literal brains a break from itself.

3. Movement shifts your body chemistry - with a ton of benefits from sleep, digestion quality, mood, and to the nervous systems.

4. Together those things shift your mood in the short term & your self-perception - building to shifts in life experience in the long term.

Mindset Basics

Using that Information in Your Life

What can you do with that knowledge above?

For starters: move your body!

Even a little bit of movement is going to be better than no movement at all.
No time for a big workout? Can you take that work call as a walk?
No time for that dance class? Can you dance with your kids?
No time for the gym? Can you shovel snow or mow the lawn?

Finding movement throughout the day is enough to get started. It counts.
Is it optimal… maybe not… that depends on your goals and what’s important in your life right now.

It might be helpful to remember that the fitness industry isn’t only altruistic - it exists to make money. So there’s an incentive to push the idea that you need a gym membership and to go there for an hour. If that doesn’t suit your goals or your life that’s okay.

Next: start with what you like & what’s doable

You are far more likely to be consistent with your movement practice if you like it¹⁶, it feels good, and you feel you can accomplish what you set out to do.

Hate running but love skating? Go skate.
Hate dancing but love playing soccer? Play soccer.
Hate weight lifting but love gardening? Pick up heavy stuff in your yard.

Yes, over time learn good movement.
But not everyone has to fall in love with “exercise” to reach their goals.

But What About Exercise?

Barring the above, if you’re going the exercise route and your goals are mental health here are the suggestions I make to my clients:

1. Start by building up your step count - whether running or walking the data is very clear: more steps typically equate themselves to better moods and overall feelings of wellbeing and life satisfaction. Build up by adding 1000k steps per week until you’re over 8k steps. Then, add until you feel you’ve got “enough” to consistently feel good
   

2. Add some resistance training - Some of the coolest research to come out the last few years has been how chemically active our muscles are in regulating cognition, mood, focus, and hormones we associate with mood and self-regulation. Getting physically strong doesn’t only have the obvious advantages to physical performance - it also changes how you think and how you feel.
   
   Start with simple functional training 2 days per week. It’s okay if it’s only 15 or 30 minutes - that’s enough to change your physical state.
   

3. 20 minutes of moderate intensity cardio 3 days a week - Regardless of what modality you use (the fitness word for what machinery or running or whatever) you want to shoot for an intensity where you’re huffing and puffing but can still talk. That intensity increases your sensitivity to the serotonin you already have on board.

   Cardio 101

4. Now circle back - What did you learn from the journey above so far? Where do you want to go from here? What are your goals? How have you changed?
   
   The answers to those questions will dictate what you tweak/change/add as you continue to shift your own state of wellness and wellbeing.

   
   

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2. Greenwood, B. N. (2019). The role of dopamine in overcoming aversion with exercise. Brain Research, 1713, 102–108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2018.08.030

3. Zimmer, P., Stritt, C., Bloch, W., Schmidt, F.-P., Hübner, S. T., Binnebößel, S., … Oberste, M. (2016). The effects of different aerobic exercise intensities on serum serotonin concentrations and their association with Stroop task performance: a randomized controlled trial. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 116(10), 2025–2034. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-016-3456-1

4. Jackson, E. M. (2013). STRESS RELIEF: The Role of Exercise in Stress Management. ACSM’s health & fitness journal, 17(3), 14–19. https://doi.org/10.1249/FIT.0b013e31828cb1c9

5. Cocchiara, R. A., Peruzzo, M., Mannocci, A., Ottolenghi, L., Villari, P., Polimeni, A., … La Torre, G. (2019). The use of yoga to manage stress and burnout in healthcare workers: A systematic review. Journal of clinical medicine, 8(3). https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm8030284

6. Cocchiara, R. A., Peruzzo, M., Mannocci, A., Ottolenghi, L., Villari, P., Polimeni, A., … La Torre, G. (2019). The use of yoga to manage stress and burnout in healthcare workers: A systematic review. Journal of clinical medicine, 8(3). https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm8030284

7. Yemiscigil, A., & Vlaev, I. (2021). The bidirectional relationship between sense of purpose in life and physical activity: a longitudinal study. Journal of Behavioral Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-021-00220-2

8. Kvam, S., Kleppe, C. L., Nordhus, I. H., & Hovland, A. (2016). Exercise as a treatment for depression: A meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 202, 67–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2016.03.063

9. Bartholomew, J. B., Morrison, D., & Ciccolo, J. T. (2005). Effects of acute exercise on mood and well-being in patients with major depressive disorder. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 37(12), 2032–2037. https://doi.org/10.1249/01.mss.0000178101.78322.dd

10. Lucibello, K. M., Parker, J., & Heisz, J. J. (2019). Examining a training effect on the state anxiety response to an acute bout of exercise in low and high anxious individuals. Journal of Affective Disorders, 247, 29–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2018.12.063

11. Endrighi, R., Steptoe, A., & Hamer, M. (2016). The effect of experimentally induced sedentariness on mood and psychobiological responses to mental stress. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 208(3), 245–251. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.114.150755

Childs, E., & de Wit, H. (2014). Regular exercise is associated with emotional resilience to acute stress in healthy adults. Frontiers in physiology, 5, 161. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2014.00161

12. Jackson, E. M. (2013). STRESS RELIEF: The Role of Exercise in Stress Management. ACSM’s health & fitness journal, 17(3), 14–19. https://doi.org/10.1249/FIT.0b013e31828cb1c9

Greenwood, B. N. (2019). The role of dopamine in overcoming aversion with exercise. Brain Research, 1713, 102–108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2018.08.030

13. Chang, Y. K., Labban, J. D., Gapin, J. I., & Etnier, J. L. (2012). The effects of acute exercise on cognitive performance: a meta-analysis. Brain Research, 1453, 87–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2012.02.068

14. Chang, Y. K., Labban, J. D., Gapin, J. I., & Etnier, J. L. (2012). The effects of acute exercise on cognitive performance: a meta-analysis. Brain Research, 1453, 87–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2012.02.068

15. Chang, Y. K., Labban, J. D., Gapin, J. I., & Etnier, J. L. (2012). The effects of acute exercise on cognitive performance: a meta-analysis. Brain Research, 1453, 87–101. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainres.2012.02.068

16. Fredrickson, B. L., Arizmendi, C., & Van Cappellen, P. (2021). Same-day, cross-day, and upward spiral relations between positive affect and positive health behaviours. Psychology & health, 36(4), 444–460. https://doi.org/10.1080/08870446.2020.1778696