Study Suggests You Might Be Able to Run Away Your Stress

A lot of us work pretty hard, some of us, way too hard. Burning out at work from stress is a real phenomenon, which is important to know because it’s obviously not sustainable to be burning out. According to a survey done at the American Institute of Stress, almost half of workers in the U.S. report feeling debilitating stress at work sometimes, and this issue leads to costs upwards of $300 billion a year.

Why? Because when people are stressed out they develop all sorts of physical problems, many of which can affect their work in the short term and in the long term.

Some researchers in Australia set out to find if not a cure for work burnout from stress, something that would at least help alleviate it. Their focus was on fitness.

To begin the researchers separated out three groups of sedentary workers into three different groups and then assigned them some different types of workouts. One group was asked to stay sedentary as a control group, one group was asked to a resistance training program, and the last was asked to do an aerobics training program. They were assessed at two and four weeks into the program to see how they were feeling.

Unsurprisingly, the two groups that added exercise to their life were feeling better than they were before and experiencing less stress overall. But the group who did the aerobic exercise as opposed to strength training had even greater results. The participants reported feeling less emotional exhaustion and psychological pressure.

The study was done on a fairly small group of about 100, but the results were pretty spot on and led them to believe that this would apply to most people. The takeaway? Getting your cardio in might be crucial to your mental and emotional well being.

If you don’t feel like you have time to get in a cardio session most days, you might want to try out doing three different ten minute sessions throughout the day and see if that helps. Even walking on your lunchbreak or to and from work can help tremendously. Heck even standing up at your desk and pacing around on phone calls can help you increase the miles you put in each week.

On the days that you do have time for full on workouts, be sure and mix in both cardio and strength training for the best results. Doing some cardio like running on the treadmill is a great way to warm up the body for your strength training anyway. It gets the blood flowing into the muscles without over taxing them.

Besides helping to relieve your emotional stress, cardio can also help reduce stress in the body in a variety of ways that will support your emotional health anyway. Cardio can help you sleep better, increase your confidence, and of course keep your weight in check.