Avoid These Exercises When Your Life Gets Overly Stressful

Is Intensity the Answer When Your Life is Stressful?

If your life is stressful, there are certain types of exercise routines that you should avoid.

The first thing to acknowledge is the fact that exercise in and of itself, IS a stressor. Your body doesn’t differentiate between different stressors that we place on it. If you have financial issues, relationship problems, or are sleep deprived, your body only knows that it is stressed for some reason. It doesn’t think to itself, “Oh this person is having relationship problems so we’re going to pull from this energy source to manage the stress.”

The bottom line is, stress is stress, no matter how you slice it. Exercise falls under the category of stress, so when you exercise while stressed in other areas of your life, you are adding one more thing for your body to manage. It is important to identify these stressors in your life so you can make the appropriate decision on what type of workout to do.

The LAST thing you want to do is add a crazy amount of intensity during hectic times in your life. If you recently experienced the death of a loved one, loss of job, financial strain, a break up, moving homes, or anything that is a life changing event, you are stressed out.

During these times, you should aim for LESS intensity. You should still exercise, but just make sure to keep it at 50-60% or less intensity. So if you are going for a run, bump down your pace to something less than what you normally do.

If you are lifting weights, decrease the weight and repetitions you do in order to minimize the stress you place on your body. If you workout at a CrossFit gym, now is the time to scale to less weight and intensity to allow your body room to manage the other stresses in life.

Whatever you do, stay consistent with your routine and try not to skip days. But when you are stressed, decrease the intensity so you can better manage the other things life throws your way.

I discuss this in more detail in the video below.