Running for Mental Health
Doing any type of exercise is going to help build your physical fitness. Most people often forget the benefit exercise and training can have on you mentally too.
Exercise and training releases endorphins in your body which stimulate your brain, often know has the happy chemicals, which is why you feel better once you’ve trained.
It might be hard dragging yourself to the gym or going out for a run when the weather isn’t too appealing but you always feel happy and when you’ve finished.
Running helps you mentally in other ways too.
It is great for stress management, if you’ve had a busy day at work or at home with the kids this is the perfect time to unwind and you can only think about what you’re doing in that particular moment – running. All your other responsibilities don’t matter at that time, it is just you some trainers and wherever you decide to run.
The long term effects of running and exercise will improve your cardiovascular fitness (your heart and lungs), if your able to reduce your heart rate and then your blood pressure your stress levels and anxiety will reduce too.
I know a lot of people run to help reduce their anxiety levels, this links in to helping provide mental clarity and reducing stress levels as above. You can control your heart rate and breathing and focus on what you’re doing.
Getting your fix of vitamin D, in this country especially when it is rainy and cloudy so much we spend a lot of time indoors getting out when it’s sunny and going for a run boosts your vitamin D levels and makes you feel like you have more energy.
Running will help make you more productive. You can chunk your day into things to do and you know you then need to have time scheduled in for you run. This can work for exercising and going to the gym too. Whilst you’re making time into your routine helps, you’ll also be more focused when you go back to work and your concentration levels will be higher too, having the same knock on effect and boosting your productivity.
Running is a great exercise and can help you mentally whether you decide to run on your own and take that time to yourself or if you run socially with friends. Everybody has the same thing in common when running. It can be great to chat problems through with your friends when you run or to complete distract yourself from what might be going on at home or work when you’re with them.
You don’t need to set a massive amount of time to go for a run, most people like to do anything from 30 to 60 minutes, but it’s been shown that 10 minutes exercise and running can help to reduce stress and anxiety levels.
