Lift To Look After Your Mental Health In Lockdown
This lockdown period due to COVID–19 has no doubt brought on many physical, psychological, emotional, social and financial challenges to us all. Physically, far less incidental activity is happening, we just are not moving as much – bed, desk, kitchen, couch, bed, repeat.
During this lock down period there has been a drastic increase in demand for mental health services as well as increases in suicide rates. Access to gyms, team sports, physical activity and the socialisation that goes along with it plays a critical role in positive mental wellbeing.
Strength training is increasingly promoted for its many health-related benefits including a lower risk to all causes of mortality, fewer cardiovascular events (i.e., heart attack, stroke), improved body composition, better glucose metabolism & insulin sensitivity, and lower blood pressure in persons with pre-hypertension and hypertension (1).
On top of that, strength training is the most impactful intervention for the prevention and/or management of osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, metabolic syndrome, and improving outcomes for patients, pre, during and post cancer treatment.
Benefits for mental health:
In life, everyone will experience feelings of sadness, depression and anxiety. However, intense and sustained feelings of sadness may lead to feelings of hopelessness and helplessness resulting in mood disturbances, fatigue, lack of motivation, insomnia, restlessness, agitation, and body weight fluctuations.
More studies have looked at the effect of strength training in persons with symptoms of depression than any other area of Mental Health, and the results of them have been unanimously positive (2).
In fact, strength training provides better results than aerobic exercise alone on symptoms of depressions. Studies that have investigated the effect of strength training with clinically diagnosed depressed adults, not just depression symptoms, have seen the largest large reductions in depression of all populations (11-14)!
Science behind the facts:
Theories suggest that strength training is likely to induce multi-factorial adaptations involving new nerve cell generation in the brain, an increase in neurotransmitters (chemical substances that transmits nerve impulses across a synapse), and new brain blood vessels that lead to more efficient oxygen delivery and waste product removal within the brain itself.
Resistance training also increases the production of protective neurotrophin genes and protein expression in the brain. One key type of neurotrophin, or growth factor, is kynurenine. Kynurenine controls and promotes the growth of new neurons; as well as components of the body’s opioid and endocannabinoid systems, which play roles in pain control and mood regulation.
Want to make the most of your physical and mental health through resistance training? Get in touch with the expert team at Absolute and fill your backpack with books, squat your child, step ups on the garden ledge, grab those barbells, dumbbells and bands if you have them and start lifting. You will dramatically improve your physical health, and it certainly looks to have great affect on your psychological health too!
Written by Exercise Scientist, Head Performance Coach & Co-founder David Smith