Exercise is an important part of resilience building but not all exercise is good.
What? Wait a minute, how can exercise not be good?
Like all things, exercise is great in balance. But it is possible to over-exercise and this has negative impacts for both our physical and emotional wellbeing.
But to begin, let’s spend a couple of minutes understanding why exercise is good for resilience building in the first place.
How does exercise build resilience?
Peta Sigley, Chief Knowledge Officer for Springfox, recently described exercise as a fundamental competency of resilience in this podcast.
We all know that exercise is good for our physical wellbeing. When you also exercise it has a positive impact on our emotional wellbeing.
Regular physical exercise teaches our stress response system how to recover more efficiently. It also acts an anti-depressant, dropping our levels of cortisol and adrenaline. In addition it can reduce inflammation.
And this is the important part : when done right.
How can I do exercise in a way that isn’t right?
If we over-exercise our body goes into overdrive. Instead of recognising exercise as a stress buster, it believes we’re in prolonged stress and switches to a stress state. This can lead to an increase in inflammation and our immune system being in high alert.
Does that mean we shouldn’t exercise? Absolutely not!
The gain to be had from doing regular exercise is important. We’re trying to learn how to foster resilience and as we’ve read, exercise is hugely beneficial for this.
But it is important for you to learn to exercise well, in a way that is right for your body.
It’s all about finding your sweet spot
To truly boost your resilience through stress you need to work out what your sweet spot is.
To do that you need to learn to listen to your body. What would most help your body today? Peta Sigley says ‘Your perfect dose of exercise will depend on the state of the rest of your life.’ Would your body benefit from an intensive workout or a restorative workout?
Regularly scheduling in exercise is important too as this has the long term impact on your body’s stress levels. Start slow and build it up. As you do, pay attention to what your body is telling you.
In his book, The Stress Solution, Dr Rangan Chatterjee outlines some of the signs that might show you that you are over-exercising:
Inability to sleep at night following a vigorous workout
Sleeping too much, compared to your norm, and still feeling exhausted
Waking up with your heart racing after an intense workout
Feeling exhausted for the rest of the day following a workout
Feeling irritable and moody after an increase in the intensity of your exercise
Frequently getting ill [for example, coughs and cold]
If you’re someone who exercises regularly already, do you feel the benefit of it? And can you recognise those signs when you have overdone it?
If regular exercise isn’t a regular habit for you, how could you begin to build it in? And by exercise we don’t mean suddenly start running a 5k. Remember to start slow and build it up. Find an exercise that works for you and your body. Walking is a great starting point and we’d recommend listening to the 8 minute bitesize conversation between neuroscientist Shane O’Mara and Dr Rangan Chatterjee to learn more about how walking can have benefits beyond the physical.
You can find out more about this topic by reading or listening to the following:
Resilience Real-Time with Peta Sigley : Episode 13: Exercise - How, What and Why
The Stress Solution - Dr Rangan Chatterjee
How to Look After your Mental Health using Exercise - The Mental Health Foundation
How Walking Improves Our Brain and Mental Health - Conversation between neuroscientist Shane O’Mara and Dr Rangan Chatterjee [Feel Better, Live More podcast]