Weight training may help easE anxiety

• Improving sleep for chronic worriers

• Keeping anxiety from escalating

• Facing feared sensations head-on

Resistance training has more advantages than just giving you toned arms and a flat abdomen. There is mounting evidence that it might prevent excessive worry and anxiety.

By working a muscle or set of muscles, resistance training (also known as strength training or weight training) increases muscular strength and endurance. Your muscles can be worked in this way with free weights, dumbbells, weight machines, resistance bands, medicine balls, or even your own body weight.

Your attitude to life may benefit by doing this. "The study literature suggests that even single bouts of resistance exercise may generate modest benefits in anxiety," says Justin Strickland, M.S., a PhD student at the University of Kentucky and the primary author of a journal paper summarising this research.

When resistance training is done frequently for six weeks or more, some modest studies have discovered decreases in anxiety. That is valid for a variety of study populations, such as elderly people, stroke survivors, and women with polycystic ovary syndrome.

Several studies have demonstrated the positive effects of cardiovascular exercise, such as brisk walking, jogging, cycling, or playing tennis, on mood, stress reduction, and overall wellbeing. In contrast, research on the capability of resistance training to reduce anxiety is still in the molehill stage. Although there is still much to learn, preliminary research suggests that resistance training may help reduce anxiety.

Improving sleep for chronic worriers

There will always be times when you will worry. Yet, excessive, persistent concern and anxiety about a range of things can become out of control in people with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). Sleep disruption frequently coexists with this pattern of constant concern. Individuals who have GAD may have difficulty falling asleep or experience fitful, restless sleep.

Improved sleep is one way resistance training may be advantageous. Young women with GAD were randomised to lower-body weight training (resistance exercise), cycling (aerobic exercise), or being placed on a waiting list in an intriguing study (the control group). For a period of six weeks, both the resistance and aerobic exercise groups exercised twice each week.

Both forms of exercise enhanced sleep, particularly on weekends. Exercise with resistance was really beneficial. Matthew Herring, Ph.D., the principal researcher, and a lecturer in exercise psychology at the University of Limerick in Ireland, explains that short-term exercise training essentially helped these young ladies fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly. Anxiety decreases were linked to improvements in sleep.

Whether less anxiety resulted in greater sleep or vice versa was not truly addressed by our data, claims Herring. Some research, however, contends that the relationship is reciprocal, and that exercise may benefit both parties simultaneously.

Keeping anxiety from escalating

Resistance training may also lessen anxiety sensitivity, which is the fear of the bodily symptoms brought on by worry. According to Joshua Broman-Fulks, Ph.D., a clinical psychology professor at Appalachian State University, people with high anxiety sensitivity frequently catastrophise these feelings.

For instance, they could think that a racing heart indicates a heart attack is about to occur. They get much more frightened because of that. They eventually start to fear not only the thing or circumstance that initially caused their anxiety, but also the unpleasant feeling itself.

In a study directed by Broman-Fulks, volunteers were randomised to either rest, a single 20-minute session of resistance training with weights, or aerobic exercise on a treadmill (the control group). They then participated in a carbon dioxide challenge activity. This required inhaling a mixture of carbon dioxide and oxygen, which temporarily made them feel out of breath and imitated the quick, shallow breathing that anxiety causes. Participants also provided answers to a questionnaire that assessed their susceptibility to anxiety.

The findings demonstrated that both resistance exercise and aerobic exercise reduced anxiety sensitivity to the same extent. Exercise may "function as a form of exposure therapy to feared feelings among those with high anxiety sensitivity," according to Broman-Fulks, who notes that the study did not examine how exercise had this effect.

Facing feared sensations head-on

An established anxiety treatment is exposure therapy. In this method, individuals methodically confront an environment that excessively terrifies them. Their panic begins to subside as they realise that they can handle the circumstance without anything bad happening.

In a study, moderate-intensity exercise gave participants the feeling of breathing a little more forcefully than usual. Positive exercise experiences may enable individuals to recognise anxiety-related breathlessness without overreacting to it.

Other physiological reactions to exercise, besides modifications in breathing, include a higher heart rate and increased sweating. Although we frequently link these changes to aerobic exercise, Broman-Fulks points out that strength training can also cause them.

Short rest intervals in between sets during resistance training "enable those feelings to regulate a little before being raised again with the next set," the author explains. He compares the outcome to performing several "mini-exposure sessions" alongside each resistance training session.

According to Broman-Fulks' research, a single session of resistance training significantly reduced anxiety sensitivity. The totality of the available research indicates that lifting weights may be a useful strategy for lowering anxiety and other depressive mood states.