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Protect your Mental Health with Strength Training

Protect your Mental Health with Strength Training

Let’s face it, when you’re feeling exhausted or overwhelmed, it’s easy to want to skip your workout. But during these moments, exercise can be exactly what you need to feel energized and rejuvenated.

When you go to the gym to do your full-body workout, your muscles get stronger with every push and pull. What you may not realize is that your mental health is toughening up, too. Studies show that people who exercise regularly—and engage in an exercise routine that includes strength training—have better mental health and lower rates of mental illness than those who do not work out.

In the past, studies have looked at the effects of aerobic exercise on mental health. More recently, scientists have started to look at the emotional benefits of strength training, too. A recent study done at Penn State University found that strength training significantly reduced symptoms of depression.¹ That’s why choosing a workout that includes strength training for women is so important for overall mental and physical health.

The Link Between Exercise & Mental Health

The psychological benefits of exercise are both short and long-term. In the short-term, an energizing full-body workout is one of the best things you can do to pull yourself out of an emotional slump. You will feel a sense of accomplishment as soon as you finish your workout. And the mental benefits of exercise are long lasting, helping you feel stronger and more confident for the rest of the day.

Here are some specific benefits of exercise on mental health:

More get up and go

You might think engaging in a full-body workout for women would leave you feeling tired, but exercise gives you an energy boost. There are a few reasons why. For one, when you work out, your cells produce more mitochondria. Because they help your body create fuel, more mitochondria equal a bigger energy supply. Exercise also increases oxygen in your body, as well as levels of hormones that help you feel energized.²

Better sleep

It’s hard to function at your best with less than a good night’s sleep; improved sleep is another mental benefit of exercise. According to the National Sleep Foundation, moderate to vigorous exercise increases sleep quality by reducing the amount of time it takes to fall asleep as well as lowering the chances you will lie awake in the middle of the night. Engaging in a regular exercise routine can also prevent sleepiness during the day and reduce the need for sleep meds at night. Indirectly, exercise helps maintain a healthy weight, which prevents sleep disorders such as sleep apnea.³

Feel-good hormones

When you sweat it out in the Curves Circuit, your body also pumps out hormones called endorphins, which reduce pain and make you feel good mentally, too. These same hormones cause the so-called “runner’s high,” but you can get the same effect doing a workout for women like the full-body workout at Curves.⁴

Sharpens your focus

Research shows that strength training can help protect areas of the brain that are vulnerable to Alzheimer’s disease. In one Australian study, researchers found that six months of strength training helped protect those areas up to one year later.⁵

Keep in mind that exercise shouldn’t be stressful, and you don’t have to engage in long workouts to be strong and active. Because the Curves Circuit is only 30 minutes, it’s easy to fit a full-body workout into your busy day. At Curves, you can start slowly with low impact and build strength at your own pace. And on the days that your schedule doesn’t allow you to get to the gym for your full-body workout, MyCurves On Demand is available so that you can complete your workout whenever and wherever you need!

Boosting Mental Health & Positivity with Exercise

It’s no secret that regular exercise contributes to better mental health and emotional well-being. And in turn, positivity and optimism can also often help bolster the benefits of a full-body workout that includes strength training, aerobic exercise – also known as cardio, and stretching.

What is positivity?

Positivity is the practice of being positive or optimistic in attitude and outlook. It’s seeing the glass not as half empty, but as half full. Not only does positivity make you a more pleasant and likable person, it has numerous benefits for your mental and physical health. When we feel good about ourselves, we are more likely to be optimistic and positive in general.⁶ And because regular exercise makes us feel good mentally and physically, women who workout are often more positive than women who don’t.

The Benefits of Exercise on Mental Health

We all know a regular full-body workout, like the Curves Circuit or MyCurves On Demand, is good for our physical health. A workout that combines women’s strength training, cardio, and stretching helps reduce the risk of several diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and some forms of cancer. It strengthens your bones and muscles and helps you lose weight. As a bonus, regular exercise boosts brain health and helps prevent memory loss, depression, and anxiety.⁶

Here are some more specific ways exercise impacts mental and emotional wellbeing:

Better cope with emotional stress

Both strength training and aerobic workouts help us deal with emotional stress. To dive more deeply into the relationship between a regular total body workout like the Curves Circuit and lower levels of stress, exercise appears to give our bodies a practice run at the stress response. When we are under emotional stress, our heart rate increases, we start sweating, and we get a rush of adrenaline. Our bodily systems all talk to each other to get us through the challenge at hand. Similar things happen when we hit the Curves Circuit or take a Curves class. In short, a tough workout prepares us for a tough work project or other life stress.⁷

Build your self-confidence

A regular total body workout like the Curves Circuit helps you build confidence and self-esteem. When you engage in a combination of strength training and aerobic exercise, you are completing a full-body workout. Do that workout regularly and add to it a healthy eating plan, and you’re bound to see results. You may lose pounds, drop a clothing size or two, and/or notice an increase in your strength and muscle tone. When you look in the mirror, you will feel proud of what you see. All these results do wonders for your self-esteem.

Feel good and less stressed

Exercise makes you feel good, but not high. When you exercise, your body releases chemicals called endorphins that help dull muscle pain. Research has shown that exercise and endorphins are indeed linked. However, the long-held belief that your body releases enough endorphins to produce a “runner’s high,” or euphoric feeling during a workout, have come into question over the past few years. They have found that endorphins don’t cross from your blood into your brain. The “high” you experience when you finish an aerobic workout may instead be due to chemicals called endocannabinoids, which help lower anxiety and make you feel calm.⁸

Build strength in all areas of life

Strength training for women builds strength in all areas of life. When you start a full-body workout like the Curves Circuit that involves resistance training, you will feel yourself getting stronger over time. With each 30-minute session, you will build your balance and muscular strength. As you gain strength and balance, you will notice everyday tasks getting easier, such as carrying heavy grocery bags, climbing a ladder to dust a light fixture or fan, or piggybacking your kids or grandkids. When you see these changes and feel your body moving in a positive direction, it does wonders for your confidence and self-esteem.

Feel a sense of achievement

You will feel empowered with a sense of accomplishment. One of the best ways to measure the success of your full-body workouts is to track your progress toward reaching goals. These goals can be short term, like striving to complete the 30-minute circuit or a Curves class. Goals can also be long term, such as I want to drop a bathing suit size before my trip to the Caribbean. The best goals are S.M.A.R.T.—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. A goal of losing 80 pounds in three months is too lofty. It’s fine to have an ultimate destination in your journey, but try to set realistic mini-goals along the way. For example, I want to lose three pounds the first week, cut out processed meats the second, get to Curves four times the third, and take three Curves classes the fourth.

Clear your head

Use your Curves workouts to clear your head. When you are going through the Curves Circuit or sweating in a Curves class, you have a clear objective for the duration of the workout, and as you focus on your body, you push out intrusive worries and thoughts. Exercise helps you become more mindful and present in the moment—a skill you can take with you after you leave Curves.

Exercise and happiness are linked. Research shows regular physical activity can be as effective as medications at tackling depression. And in a 2020 study that looked at more than 2,000 people of all ages, researchers found regular physical activity was linked to better life satisfaction and happiness in young, middle aged, and older adults.⁹

Recovering from Physical & Mental Burnout

As women, we are naturally prone to burnout. We tend to push ourselves to the limit in all facets of our lives—taking care of kids and grandkids, working, managing our households, and juggling it all. According to the American Psychological Association, women are more likely than men to report high levels of stress.¹⁰ Turns out, we can burn ourselves out at the gym, too. Exercise provides natural stress relief, but when we take it too far, exercise can actually contribute to stress and burnout.

The key is to strike a good balance, to exercise the right amount and in the right way to provide stress relief, which is important for protecting your mental health. Here are some tips to help you recover from burnout, whether physical or mental:

How exercise provides stress relief

Physical activity provides natural stress relief by doing a few different things for your body. For one, engaging in a regular exercise routine improves sleep, boosts your mood, and increases self-esteem. It also helps reduce levels of tension and prevents anxiety. When you engage in a full-body workout like the Curves Circuit or MyCurves On Demand, your brain releases natural painkillers called endorphins, which help reduce stress. Exercise also improves alertness, boosts energy, and increases cognitive function, so you can best tackle all that you have to think about and do in a day.¹¹

But in order to harness all the stress relief exercise can provide, you must also realize you can have too much of a good thing.

Recognizing the signs of burnout

One of the most effective ways to prevent burnout is to recognize the signs, so you can stop it in its tracks. This is true of both emotional and physical burnout. If you are exercising fewer than five days a week, especially if they’re not in a row, chances are, you’re not physically burning out. Instead, the burnout may be a culmination of your full-body workout coupled with everything else you’re juggling in your busy life. Emotional burnout is just as serious, but you’re not going to find a remedy for it by cutting back on your workout plan.¹²

Recognize the physical signs
If you’re pushing yourself too hard, you may experience the following:

A faster resting heart rate
Soreness every day, because your body isn’t getting a chance to heal
Feeling tired and unmotivated in the middle of your full-body workout
Loss of sleep

Look out for mental signs, too
The biggest mental sign of burnout is irritability. When you’re overloaded and stressed out, your levels of the stress hormone cortisol spike, which makes everything from the way your spouse chews to the song playing at the grocery store seem annoying. Cortisol can rise from too much emotional or physical stress.¹²

How to avoid burnout

Take a break – If you notice physical signs of burnout—the fast heart rate, exhaustion, irritability, lack of sleep we mentioned above—and you know you’ve been working out excessively it’s time to take a break. Think about how long it’s been that you’ve been pushing too hard and take a rest day for each week. If it’s been four weeks of extra hard full-body workouts, for example, take four days of rest. This doesn’t mean doing nothing. Instead of an intense whole body workout, do some stretches for women, or exercises for stress, such as yoga or mindful meditation.¹²

Switch things up – A common reason for physical burnout is doing the same exercise routine over and over. To keep your body fresh and engaged, change what you do—and the intensity—from day to day. Complete your Curves circuit or MyCurves On Demand workout at a higher-intensity one day with a cardio or boxing class, then take a body basics or balance class the next. Then go back to the circuit.

Protect yourself with the right workout – It may seem like easy exercise for women, but really, it’s doing your body so much good. The Curves workout has been designed specially to be a safe and healthy workout plan for women. With the guidance of your Curves Coach, you can rest assured that every move you make at Curves will provide natural stress relief and prevent burnout.

With all the stressful things in our lives we cannot control, the last thing we want to do is create stress with our exercise routines! As you go through your busy life—and your workout plan—keep your eyes out for signs of physical and mental burnout, and be ready to stop it in its tracks, either by pulling back or shifting to a new form of exercise for stress relief.

About Curves

For 30 years, Curves has been a leader in women’s fitness, helping millions of women get stronger and healthier. Curves’ mission is to strengthen women by providing fun, fast, and safe programs to help women reach their health and fitness goals. Curves is one of the largest chains of fitness clubs for women in the world, famous for its 30-minute circuit with a coach that works every major muscle group with strength training, cardio and stretching.

Curves is also the perfect exercise for mental health. It’s a 30-minute workout suitable for all fitness levels, incorporates strength training for women, and it’s so easy to fit into your lifestyle and level of fitness. Plus, you’ll get an instant social network in the form of a supportive community of women to cheer you on, which is good for emotional wellbeing, too. And your Curves Coach will motivate and guide you through your workout and help you set goals for your fitness journey as you get stronger.

Curves Specialty Classes/Circuits focus on providing strength, balance, and flexibility through categories like Balance, Body Basics, Cardio, and Boxing. The Curves Nutrition & Weight Management Program promotes balanced and sustainable nutrition education designed to help decrease body fat, increase lean muscle mass, and improve metabolism when followed with the Curves workout.

MyCurves On Demand brings the Curves trusted 30-minute workout to your own home. Led by real Curves coaches and developed by Curves program experts, MyCurves On Demand is accessible anytime, anywhere on your favorite smart device. MyCurves On Demand + Group Coaching combines the support and accountability of a Curves Coach with the virtual online community of like-minded women.

The Curves Health & Wellness Education Series provides members with education on important health topics impacting women of all ages, so they can make improvements for their own health and wellbeing. Through these courses, you will learn more about these health topics as well as exercises to help you improve them.

Exercise has so many physical and mental benefits, and it is essential that you stay active and engage in strength training to protect your mental health. No matter what your age, fitness level, or state of mind, there is no better time than now to join Curves and begin your fitness journey! Find your local club here!

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