How Exercise Can Help Reduce Your Anxiety

January 6, 2022

Stress and anxiety at any level can be hard to manage. If you’re searching for relief, try turning to exercise. Even the smallest amount of physical activity can make a significant difference and reduce stress.

“Anxiety affects our minds and bodies. Exercise can serve as a natural antidepressant, boosting our mood at the same time it improves our health,” said Megan LaDrigue, ATC CSCS, an athletic trainer at Henry Ford Health System. “You don’t need to join a gym to exercise. The world is full of opportunities to be more active. You can add in short exercise sessions throughout the day to recharge your mood and energy.”

How Anxiety Impacts Your Health

If not addressed, anxiety can impact your mental and physical health. “Anxiety causes an imbalance in the chemicals and hormones that support our brain, immune system, digestive health and sleep,” said LaDrigue.

Chronic stress can lower our feel-good hormones – serotonin, dopamine and epinephrine. At the same time, the stress hormone cortisol increases when we’re under pressure or anxious. As a result of these shifts, you may experience:

► Trouble concentrating and loss of productivity at work or school
► Irritability and moodiness
► Difficulty sleeping
► Weight gain and digestive problems
► High blood pressure and increased risk for other diseases

How Exercise Can Break The Stress Cycle

“By adding exercise into your daily routine, you can begin to manage anxiety and improve your overall health,” said Ladrigue. Exercise offers many benefits, including:

► Shifting your focus: Focusing on your physical activity is a chance to take a mental break from daily tasks and recharge.
► Improving mood and confidence: When you exercise, your heart contracts more frequently, increasing blood flow to the brain and triggering changes in those feel-good chemicals. These changes improve mood and confidence. Over time, exercise can also help build resilience by increasing your ability to tolerate stress.
► Enhancing concentration and productivity: Exercise activates the areas in the brain that control how we think and act. For example, physical activity can improve your ability to plan, organize and monitor behavior and tasks.
► Improving sleep: Fatigue can increase feelings of stress and anxiety, which increase your risk for insomnia or poor sleep. Exercise improves your ability to get the quality, restorative sleep that you need to recharge your mind and body.

3 Steps To Starting An Anxiety-Fighting Exercise Routine

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends adults get 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week. “But you don’t need to do all of that exercise at once. If you’re just getting started, gradually build exercise into your daily routine to create a healthy habit,” LaDrigue said.

Ladrigue recommends these three steps to build an anxiety-busting fitness routine:

  1. Make it fun: Whether it’s walking or weightlifting, if exercise doesn’t inspire you and make you feel good, it won’t help you manage anxiety. If being social helps motivate you, find a workout buddy and encourage each other to keep moving. Explore new types of exercise by taking an online or in-person fitness class.
  2. Create a flexible schedule: If finding time in your day to exercise adds to your stress, try working in shorter activity periods. Do some stretches while you’re waiting for the coffee to brew. Take a walk during lunch or while you’re talking on the phone. Use the stairs instead of the elevator. Park your car farther away from your destination and walk the extra distance.
  3. Set goals: Start by setting short-term goals for your fitness routine. Record your progress to stay focused and motivated. As exercise becomes a daily habit, set longer-term goals. For example, try a community walk or run, join a hiking club or participate in a local sports league.
Build An Effective Workout Plan

If you’re new to exercise or have an underlying health condition, check with your primary care physician before starting a fitness routine. Had an injury in the past? See a physical therapist or sports medicine provider to avoid future injuries.

If you’ve taken a break from exercise or are exercising for the first time, start slowly. Over time, you can gradually increase the time and intensity of your workout to meet your goals.

When picking an exercise program, Ladrigue suggests including these elements:

► Warm up: Start with five minutes of activity like jumping jacks or running in place to increase the blood flow to your muscles.
► Dynamic stretching: Gently move through small or large ranges of motion to elongate the muscle tissue. For example, you can try arm circles or walking quad stretches to get your muscles warmed up.
► Strength training: If you’re new to strength training, start with light weights. You can start with three sets of 10 repetitions for each muscle group. Combine sets for a muscle group on the front of the body immediately followed with a set for a muscle group on the back of the body, like biceps and triceps. This approach is called “super-setting.” It keeps your heart rate elevated while giving the working muscle group time to recover. It also increases your metabolic burn, the rate at which you burn calories during exercise.
► Aerobic activity: Choose from a variety of  activities, like walking, running, biking, swimming or dancing. Light- to moderate-intensity exercise can help you recover at the end of a strength training workout while increasing oxygen and blood flow to the working tissues.
► Cool down: Hold stretches for 20 to 30 seconds to elongate the muscle tissue used in your workout. This type of stretching helps prevent or minimize soreness.

“While starting a new habit like exercise can seem daunting, stay positive. Feel empowered – you’re taking steps that will improve your overall mental and physical health for years to come,” said LaDrigue.

To find a primary care or sports medicine specialist at Henry Ford, visit henryford.com or call 1-800-436-7936.

Megan LaDrigue is an athletic trainer who works with the Henry Ford Sports Medicine Sports Performance Program.

5 Strategies To Improve Range Of Motion

March 6, 2024

When it comes to health and fitness, regular exercise and strength training get the most attention. But it turns out that improving your range of motion may pay greater dividends, particularly over the long haul. 

Henry Ford Health

“All kinds of things can impact our range of motion,” says Jennifer Burnham, an athletic trainer at Henry Ford Health. “As we age, our joints become less pliable, but any kind of surgery or injury can also impact our range of motion. And if you're somebody who sits at a desk all day long, that can affect your range of motion as well.”

Why Is Improving Flexibility Important? 

Staying active with regular cardiovascular exercise and strength training is a great way to maintain your overall physical health. But it’s important to remember that flexibility exercises come with plenty of perks, too, including:

"Unfortunately, if you have limited range of motion, you may perform tasks incorrectly, causing other muscles and joints to overcompensate for the lack of mobility,” Burnham says. “Over time, that compensation mechanism can increase the risk of injury.” 

To complicate matters, our lifestyles often don’t support our range of motion goals. Many of us spend most of our days sitting at a desk or hunched over a screen. And when we’re not sitting still, most of us are slouching. 

What Are Some Ways To Improve Range Of Motion?

You don’t have to be able to twist your limbs into a pretzel to achieve full range of motion. Instead, try to improve on your current level of flexibility with these five simple strategies: 

  1. Pay attention to timing. If you’re not ready to add a stretching day to your workout regimen, consider adding a set of flexibility exercises at the end of every session. Pre-workout stretching is helpful, too, but stretching when your muscles are warm is a more effective way to stave off injuries. 
  2. Focus on mobility and stability. Even if you can do the splits or touch your toes to the back of your head, you won’t be able to hold the position if you don’t also have strong core muscles. “Most people do stabilizing exercises such as strength training and lifting weights without paying much attention to mobilizing activities like stretching and yoga,” Burnham says. “But you really need to do both stabilizing and flexibility exercises to get an effective workout.” 
  3. Do a mix of dynamic and static stretches. Two types of stretches can help you gain an edge when it comes to improving range of motion: Dynamic (an active type of stretching where you’re moving within your range of motion) and static stretching (where you hold a stretch). Dynamic stretching with arm and head circles, side stretches, and hip circles before exercise is a good way to warm up cool muscles and help lubricate the joints. With static stretching such as touching your toes to stretch your hamstrings, the goal is to hold a position for 30 seconds or more. Static stretches are often best performed after a workout when your muscles are warm.
  4. Try foam rolling. Foam rollers act almost like a rolling pin to smooth out tight muscles. Used correctly, they can help improve range of motion — and release stress and tension. You can use foam rollers to prime your body for exercise, or to recover after a workout.
  5. Aim for balance. If one part of your body is super flexible, focus on increasing range of motion in the opposing muscle group. “So, for example, if your hamstrings are very flexible, make sure to target your quadriceps with flexibility exercises,” Burnham says. “The goal is to make sure you’re aiming for balancing in your body.”

While stretching is an important way to achieve and maintain balance, flexibility and range of motion, it isn’t always intuitive. Not sure where to begin? Consider meeting with a personal trainer or athletic trainer to help you devise a program. 

“Watching YouTube videos can be helpful, but if you’ve never done flexibility exercises before, you could overstretch your muscles or find yourself in an incorrect position to stretch,” Burnham says. “And yes, you can create bodily injury by overstretching.”

To find a sports medicine provider at Henry Ford Health, visit henryford.com/sportsmedicine or call 313-651-1969.

Reviewed by Jennifer Burnham, MS, AT, ATC, CSCS, a certified athletic trainer at the Henry Ford Center for Athletic Medicine.