5 Ways Exercise Reduces Anxiety in Men

Exercise really can reduce your anxiety.

Don’t believe me?

Wonder how?

Keep reading. I’ll give you the leading theories behind just how exercise reduces anxiety, and hopefully convince you take the first steps to reduce your anxiety through exercise.

Why Talk About Exercise In A Mental Health Blog?

I (and honestly, almost all counselors in the field) try to use a holistic and integrative approach. This just means we try to look at the whole picture, the mind, the body, the spirit, the community surrounding the person.

All of these different layers and aspects are interconnected and affect you and your anxiety. Basic wellness activities (diet, exercise, sleep) are probably not going to cure you of anxiety if you’re extremely anxious. But - they can definitely help.

Wouldn’t that be great if you could do some basic things that could reduce your anxiety within the next few weeks from a 7 or 8 out of 10 to maybe a 4 or a 5 or 6?

Yes it’s not perfect, but, it would be some positive improvement, which would show you that change and progress is possible. If you can begin to buy in early on that change is possible with these basic wellness things, then it will make it easier to work through the other challenges that may come up along the way.

Okay, on to exercise.

Exercise and Anxiety Reduction

There’s no way around it, physical exercise has a direct effect on decreasing anxiety.

We all know that exercise is in some way good for us, but for many of us, that kind of vague knowledge isn’t enough to get us to actually exercise.

There are lots of things that we know are good for us that we probably don’t do. What I want to do here is share what research says about physical exercise and anxiety, and make the links clear and direct. Hopefully it convinces you enough to shake you up in to at least trying it for a month.

It reminds me of a time when I met with a nun at a convent, who said that for years while her sisters would pray in the morning, she would sneak downstairs and have a cup of coffee by herself and read the paper. When she told her spiritual director about this, her spiritual director just said, ‘well, it sounds like you haven’t experienced the benefits of prayer yet. Once you experience the benefits of prayer, you will pray’. It took the nun years, but eventually, when the time was right, she was able to come back to prayer, find it beneficial, and it became a central part of her spirituality and life.

Until you really see the benefit of something, you’re just not going to do it.

That makes total sense. Again, what I’m hoping to do is present you with some information about how exercise can be beneficial to anxiety. I’m hoping to pack your curiosity and get you to try it out for long enough to begin to notice and enjoy the benefits. Then, you’ll want to stick with exercising because you see that the benefits (feeling less anxious), outweigh the costs (having to get up off the couch, or re-arrange your schedule, or get up a little early a few days a week).

5 Ways Exercise Reduces Men’s Anxiety

Reducing Anxiety Sensitivity

Do any of these sound familiar?:

Pounding heartbeat
Lightheaded
Dry mouth
Shortness of breath

People who are anxious are often afraid of becoming anxious! You may personally know, and dread, these physical sensations that you think of when you think of anxiety.

But notice that these symptoms are actually really similar to the symptoms in aerobic exercise. One of the benefits of exercise is that you feel these anxious symptoms, and learn that you can in fact feel them and be okay.

In fancy terms, you reduce your sensitivity to anxiety symptoms.

There was a study done in 2008 where people who scored high in anxiety sensitivity either did six 20-minute sessions of aerobic exercise, or did nothing. Not surprisingly, the people who did the exercise scored significantly lower anxiety sensitivity scores than those who did not. That was after only 6 sessions!

For a lot of anxious people, there’s a loop between physical sensations of anxiety, and the mental fears that you’re becoming more anxious. You may be familiar with this pattern in yourself:

You start to feel physical sensations (your heart rate increase);
You think ‘oh no, I’m becoming anxious’;
That thought increases the physical sensations and your heart beats deeper and faster; and then
You think ‘oh no it’s really becoming bad’, which makes your heart beat even faster; which
Makes you think even more anxious thoughts…

And the cycle continues…

It’s a really terrible loop, and can be really scary and hard to break out of.

If you are more comfortable with feeling those physical feelings of anxiety, the less likely that loop is going to started. That’s what exercise does.

After exercising, when those first physical sensations hit, instead of thinking ‘oh no I’m becoming anxious!’, you’ll think about how you’ve experienced your heart beating and shortness of breath in exercise and everything was fine. Then, hopefully cycle will stop right there.

2. Reducing State Anxiety

State anxiety is basically how likely you are to feel anxiety in a given moment or situation.

State anxiety has been proven to decrease with exercise. This means after you exercise, you’ll likely feel immediately better for a short period of time. There are some studies that show that state anxiety decreases at a similar rate to other anxiety-reducing methods (like relaxation techniques, mindfulness, sitting still for 20 minutes). Exercising has immediate short term anxiety reducing benefits.

3. Reducing Trait Anxiety

There’s another kind of anxiety called ‘trait anxiety,’ which is anxiety that exists across different situations - almost like anxiety being a part of your personality. Exercise has also been shown to reduce trait anxiety.

While other relaxation methods may help in the particular moment (state anxiety), aerobic exercise can help change your anxiety personality in as little as 10 weeks of exercise.

This is the kind of change we’re looking for when we think of treating anxiety, not just temporary change for the 20 minutes you exercise and the 20 minutes afterwards, but a deeper overall change. Exercise can impact that.

4. Healthy Chemicals

Honestly, I’m not a biologist, doctor, or psychiatrist. I just don’t get all that into brain chemistry stuff. But that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize its importance.

Our bodies are intricate, interrelated systems, and exercising the body does in fact have an impact on the brain, and that does have an impact on our thoughts and anxiety levels. Exercising has been shown to produce anti-anxiety chemicals in the brain like GABA (people often take it as a supplement to improve mood and relieve anxiety, but you can get it naturally through exercise), BDNF, serotonin (known to have an effect on depression and anxiety), and endocannabinoids.

5. (Re)Processing Stored Trauma

Ever since Peter Levine’s late 90’s book ‘Waking the Tiger,’ there has been a growing awareness of the effects of moving and interacting with our body on the release of trauma. Humans (like all mammals) evolved to physically respond to moments of anxiety. When a human saw a tiger in the wild, they ran, or they fought it off (the fight or flight response). Sometimes they froze out of fear.

In the case of fight and flight, the physical act of running or fighting releases the stored anxiety in the body. Humans are used to experiencing anxiety for brief periods of time (think 5-10 minutes) and responding quickly to perceived threats in order to survive. After they survived, their bodies would reset, reaching homeostasis quickly and they would go on about their lives.

We live in dramatically different times however, where many of us live constantly with a low grade hum of anxiety and stress and worry. Many of our jobs create a sense of low grade anxiety in us for 40 or more hours a week! That anxiety has to be dissipated the same way our primal relatives did - through physical action.

I have heard stories of counselors who encountered clients who had become anxiety because of a traumatic even that happened decades ago where they were unable to escape a situation of sexual abuse because of their young age. The therapist recommend they take boxing lessons, and the act of physically going through the motions of utilizing the fight response when they had frozen in the past (which was not the wrong choice as children, it was likely the only choice they had, but resulted in stored trauma that never had a chance to be released in the body). The boxing classes had a profound healing impact on their client, and with therapy, resulted in the release of stored trauma, and a breakthrough for the client. Running (flight behavior), or some form of self-defense like boxing or martial arts (that also gets the heart pumping - that’s important too) that triggers the fight mechanism can all benefit anxiety.

Next Steps…

Hopefully this article has shown you that exercise absolutely can help reduce anxiety in men. The next step, of course, is for you to get out there and get your body moving. I’ll do a future post on what kind of exercise you should do, and how often you should do it - so look for that in the near future.

In the meantime, if you are a man struggling with anxiety - it’s good to have a few go-to coping skills in your back pocket that you can turn to if your anxiety feel particularly overwhelming.

I’ve created a free video - The 5 Coping Skills Every Man Needs to Know - that you can access below: