How to deal with stress through exercise

Stress is a major public health issue in modern times, and the cost of living crisis hasn't helped. A 2024 survey found that 4 in 10 people feel more stressed or anxious due to rising costs, and 2 in 10 had experienced mental health problems as a result¹.

While stress might manifest as anger, irritability or feeling overwhelmed, it might also leave you feeling unable to enjoy yourself, worried you've lost your sense of humour, or even lonely.

Physical symptoms of stress

Physical symptoms can also signal high stress levels. These include:

• Gut and skin problems.

• Chest pain.

• Headache.

• Poor concentration and memory.

• Nail-biting and skin picking.

• Feeling tearful.

How does exercise aid stress relief?

NICE, the UK body for health guidance and advice, recommends that adults should do 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week, such as brisk walking, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week, such as running². You can do a mix of both, or more.

Managing stress, improved sleep and better social interaction are all key benefits of exercise. Even small amounts of physical activity can provide overall health benefits.

How does exercise reduce stress?

Stress is a form of threat, and under threat the body releases cortisol and adrenaline to prepare to react. Exercise interrupts this process.

Dr Josephine Perry is a chartered psychologist and co-writer of the audiobook 'Power Down to Power Up'.

"Adrenaline and cortisol make us feel really rubbish," Dr Perry explains. "Heart rate goes up, breathing rate goes up, we get stomach problems, we get very tight shoulders and back muscles, and we may even lose some of our peripheral vision - the things you see outside your direct line of vision.

"But when we're exercising, the exercise effectively takes over from this reaction in our body, so we might then start to relax a little bit. We'll start to notice what's going on around us and our hearing will pick up. Heart rate and breathing rate will be up, but they'll be up because we're exercising. So, it feels like it gets rid of some of those chemicals that are unhelpfully flooding our body.

In Power Up to Power Down, Dr Perry recommends that listeners 'identify their threat zone': "When we feel under threat, and those chemicals flood our body, each of us tends to have one area of our body where we feel it most," she says.

"Mine is the bottom right-hand corner of my stomach, it will literally start throbbing. Often when it starts throbbing, I'm not really aware what I'm anxious about. I'll look at my diary and notice I've got a really big speech to give, but I won't have practised properly."

It's like a nice early warning system that the body's giving us. Identifying where in the body you feel stress gives us a good opportunity to realise, "I need to get some exercise, think through this problem and get on top of it before it becomes actually stressful."

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Stress and sleep

Sleep can make a huge difference to stress, but naturally it's one of the first things we lose. A systematic review found 29 studies that showed exercise improves sleep quality or duration, although four found no difference and one reported a negative impact - authors suggested that the relationship might not be so strong for younger people³.

Breathing techniques are a common approach to stressful thoughts at night-time and Dr Perry's audio book includes one called colourful breathing, which she sometimes uses with her five-year-old. Other techniques such as breathing with counting or box breathing may also be worth a try.

Stress and burnout

Although burnout has been recognised by the World Health Organization and is classed as a major problem for professions like healthcare, it's still viewed with cynicism.

"Burnout doesn't sound like a real thing," she says. "It sounds a bit like one of those middle-class diseases that we hear people kind of joking about, but it's horrible when you're in the middle of it. It is really tricky because it is felt by high achievers, who are used to doing more and working harder in order to find their way out of problems.

"Unfortunately, when you've got burnout, doing that is like digging yourself into a deeper and deeper hole. Techniques you would often use to handle stress, like exercise or seeing people, are also digging deeper and deeper.

"People with burnout really struggle to stop and recover, so they sometimes get to a point where they have no choice. I've spoken to people in the past who've not been able to get out of bed for weeks at a time. Your body just shuts down when you have done too much for too long. The earlier you can notice and deal with it, the more important that can be."

Dr Perry advises people experiencing high stress to build up a toolkit of coping mechanisms. For example:

• Pick from a wheel of common emotions like being OK, angry, or frustrated, then introduce a bigger wheel of more specific emotions to name what you experience regularly. You can try this yourself using Feelings Wheel.

• Then list what coping mechanisms you use now, how well they work, and what else you could try - for example, cutting out or drinking less alcohol because of its effect on sleep.

Dr Perry warns that techniques people would often use to handle stress, including exercise, tend not to work on their own. In her experience, whether because of financial, professional, or personal reasons, people with burnout might also struggle to stop work and make time to relax and recover.

In this respect, it's important not to rely on exercise on its own to resolve chronic stress, burnout or moderate to severe mental health problems.

Exercise and mastery

Stress can have a corrosive effect on our ability to concentrate, think clearly, regulate our feelings, and enjoy ourselves. By contrast, Dr Perry says, exercise reminds us of our competencies.

"It shows we are capable of things," she says. "When we pick the right exercise for us - something we feel good at, something we feel masterful at - then it reminds us we are capable. It gives us that perspective again, to see that we can tackle other things."

Further reading

1. Financial Conduct Authority: Financial lives cost of living (Jan 2024) recontact survey.

2. NICE: Physical activity: exercise referral schemes.

3. Dolezal et al: Interrelationship between sleep and exercise: a systematic review.