Could Stress Mess With Your Workouts?
You can engage in the best fat-burning workouts in preparation for a future dance competition. You backup physical activity with the right diet. But still, you’re not seeing results! What’s the problem?
Stress could be the number 1 culprit affecting a person’s ability to achieve fitness. It sabotages your workouts in many ways. Let’s find out more in this blog post.
Ways Stress Affects Your Workouts
Concentration
Physical results start in the mind. To get the most out of a movement, you need to focus your mind on the muscle you’re targeting. The problem when you’re stressed it that it impedes your focus. Also, having less focus at the gym leads to slower learning. You can find a simple workout move difficult to execute.
Endurance
Endurance refers to your ability to push through a workout, no matter how hard it is or how much you feel like giving up. You need the endurance to last the entire audition day, and evening dance rehearsals if you make the team. But with stress, you feel extremely tired to carry on.
If you’ve attempted to jog for just 30 minutes in the morning after skipping a good night’s sleep, you’ll know what I mean. Before you workout, it’s important that you’re well-rested.
Related: How to Push Beyond Your Limits and Realize Your Pro Cheer Goals
Recovery
While working out actually helps you blow off steam, doing it when you’re super stressed can backfire. Whether it’s mental or emotional stress, it definitely hinders recovery. It’ll take more time before muscle soreness and fatigue go away. Instead of going to the gym, take the day off. Allow stress to dissipate before you give your best performance.
Weight Loss
What about your body’s ability to lose weight? Stress messes with your hormones. Under stressful situations, your adrenal glands release the stress hormone cortisol. While cortisol is helpful, chronically elevated levels slow down your metabolism, making you gain weight - especially in the abdominal area. Be sure to lower your cortisol levels by getting more sleep and doing light exercises such as swimming and yoga.
Emotional Resources
Are you depleted of resources? Maybe you’re dealing with an emotional stressor that’s consuming all your energy. Being drained ruins the workouts that require more time and cognitive processing. Not to mention, it makes it hard for you to stay active.
Cravings
Think that stress doesn’t affect your food preferences? In a Harvard Mental Health Letter, it was stated that short-term stress shuts down your appetite. When prolonged, you tend to crave comfort foods. As “comfort” foods, they signal your brain to counteract stress. But because these foods are high in fat and sugar, they cause weight gain.
Read More: How to Make Healthier Choices When Eating Out: A Pro Cheerleader’s Guide
Final Thoughts
Before stress takes a toll on your fitness efforts, learn to manage it. Do something fun that takes your thoughts away from the stressor. Meditate. Get support from the right people.
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