Using Fitness Training To Practice Letting Go Of Stress
If you're anything like us then you've had those moments where something upsets you and you just can't let go of it, even though you know that you'll be away better off if you do!
Perhaps a work colleague did something. Perhaps your partner said something. Perhaps someone cut you off in traffic. Regardless, something happened and now you're upset and just can't let go.
In this blog post we're going to describe to you how you can use your movement/ fitness training to practice letting go of those tough emotions.
Before we go on, let's be clear about one thing. This is not some sort of quick fix. What we're going to describe is a method to practice letting go of stressful thoughts and situations, but it is a practice, so the more you put in, the more you will get out of it.
We've all heard people go about the benefits of breathing techniques and mindfulness meditation for stress reduction. And you know what? They're right. Breathing techniques and mindfulness meditation are great for this. But they're different to the stressful situations that we described above in one key way.
Take a moment and think; how is sitting down to practice meditation different to trying to calm yourself down when stressed?
I'll give you a moment...
Here's the moment...
*moment occurring*
Here's one way that they're different. You typically sit down to meditate when you are already quite relaxed, whereas when you're trying to calm yourself down after becoming upset by something, the starting point is much different. The starting point in this case is lots of stress. This means that while your meditation practice is probably useful, it's not totally applicable. It has probably taught you to start quite relaxed and relax further, not to start stressed and then let it all go. This is where your movement/ fitness training can really help.
As it turns out, a moderately hard workout (e.g. running fast for 60 seconds) mirrors many of the physiological traits of stress. Both increase your heart rate. Both increase your breath rate. Both increase blood pressure. Both involve activation of the sympathetic nervous system (that's the fight or flight one). We can use this to our advantage.
The problem with trying to calm ourselves in stressful situations using meditation and breathing exercises is that we often don't know when stress is about to strike. And by the time it does, we're losing control of the situation and it's tough to get it back.
But with exercise we can choose when we're about to cause ourselves stress, and decide ahead of time that we're going to practice our relaxation techniques. And because the physiological response to exercise shares some similarities with being upset, we get the chance to practice something similar to calming ourselves down after becoming upset.
Here's how you do it.
Pick a simple interval training workout that allows you to get your heart rate up and then rest before repeating several times. A basic example would be:
5 rounds of:
run fast for 60 seconds
rest until completely relaxed
Start your first interval. Use it to get your heart rate up. You don't want to go 100%. Just go hard enough that you get your heart rate up. Remember, we're doing this to practice letting go of stress, not specifically to get a workout (although you will). If you workout too hard when you're first learning this you won't be able to let go.
After 60 seconds of work, begin a relaxation breathing exercise. If you have one that you already use, great. If not, just sit down or lie down on your back and try to breath in for five seconds and out for five seconds. Enjoy the release of tension on the out breath. It will initially be hard to make the five seconds (even 1 or 2 seconds might be tough, so just do what you can), but over time as you calm down it will become easier. When you have calmed down completely, commence another 60 seconds of exercise.
By repeating this pattern we are using exercise to bring on some of the physiological effects of stress, and then practicing letting them settle down again.
Here's how to make the most of your training
The method that I just described has one major drawback. It relies on your perception of how relaxed you are. Long term we do want to be able to do this based only on our own perceptions, but in the beginning this can lead us astray. Here's what you do to get better feedback than your own perception can give you!
If you have a decent heart rate monitor, we're going to use it alongside something called 'Heart Rate Variability' to give you real time feedback on how you're doing.
Heart Rate Variability is the variation in the time between consecutive heartbeats in milliseconds. You might think that a healthy heart beats perfectly in time every beat, but at the millisecond level there is actually quite a lot of variability. Typically, the more relaxed you are, the more variability there is. Hence we can use our heart rate variability to guide us towards relaxation.
Apps such as Elite HRV (this is the one we use at the time of writing - no affiliation) work with high quality heart rate monitors (we use a Polar one, but check their Elite HRV website for compatibility - also no affiliation) to show you your heart rate variability in real time.
If you want to get the most out of the interval style practice we mentioned above, here's what you do:
Get yourself set up with a HRV monitoring app and a compatible heart rate monitor.
Practice your relaxation breathing without exercise, but with the app. Pay attention to how what you do with your breathing effects the real time HRV reading.
When you feel ready, do an interval training style workout like the one above and use the HRV app to guide your recovery. Aim to raise your HRV as quickly as possible.
Here's what to do long term
Let's be honest, as great as HRV apps and heart rate monitors are, it's just not practical to wear them around all the time and we don't want to be dependent on them.
Once you get the hang of the breathing tecniques, how they effect HRV and how they feel, start weening yourself back off the app. Do some sessions without it, and gradually over time use it less and less.
A quick word of warning
HRV isn't a perfect measure of relaxation. It's a surrogate and it can be fooled. For example, we find that excessively slow breathing techniques (more than 5 seconds in and 5 seconds out) increase HRV but also substantially increase our perceptions of stress. So don't ever completely discount your own perceptions. If it feels sketchy it probably is, and you should stop.
Wrapping up
Stressful moments happen to everyone, we all have the power to become better at letting go of that stress. Give the techniques above a go and see how they can help you to practice letting go of stress in a way that meditation and breathing techniques alone can't.
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