How to Understand Stress by Lifting Weights
Dealing with stress in our lives feels like a weight has been lifted from our shoulders but managing chronic stress can feel like pushing a weight from our chest.
Mental health is something that I never really understood as a child.
Health was always deemed as a mix of physical activity and “You are what you eat”.
I grew up hearing words and phrases like; madman, nutter, nutjob, fruit loop from people I went to school with, adults around me and on television.
As a child and a young person, these terms become part of your vocabulary and I’ve come to understand that this is where the stigma around mental illnesses stem from.
A lack of knowledge and an inability to have compassion for a person who is struggling in one way or another.
Not showing weakness and upholding an air of defiance all in the name of “being a man” or “being hard” adds a pressure that quite frankly some men just cannot hold up and they snap under the load that they’re carrying.
Struggling to carry a weight that only appears to grow heavier whilst they become increasingly fatigued every day.
As a fitness professional, I liken it to The bench press.
Lying on your back, looking up at the bar that represents the load of your commitments and daily actions.
Preparing yourself to start lifting from a position of strength and being well-rested and relaxed.
When the bar is light, there are no problems, you could do this all day. The problem with having no weight on the bar is that there is no progression.
Wishing to eliminate stress and live a stress-free life is a fallacy and one that I made a mistake in communicating many years ago.
We need stress to make us grow, adapt and become more resilient to manage the load because the increasing load in life is inevitable.
The issues begin to arise when you add too much weight to the bar. A little bit of weight is manageable and you can handle it, so you continue to add more weight until it becomes uncomfortable yet still manageable. But be careful not to go too far beyond what you can manage without a spotter (additional support for the weight if you need it).
Taking on a weight that is uncomfortable and sometimes difficult to move will encourage you to adapt, become stronger and allow you to handle that weight. But there is a missing piece in that equation that allows you to become stronger and manage that weight moving forwards.
Recovery
A common theme that I’ve noticed — especially with chronic stress sufferers is the lack of recovery. You can not continue to keep pushing that weight, adding even more weight to the bar and continuing rep after rep, set after set without setting the bar down.
For people that do lift, they understand the idea of Progressive Overload which means to steadily increase the stress on the musculoskeletal system and the nervous system.
This overload isn’t just adding more weight to the bar because you can manage the weight. The variables of overload can also include reducing the rest time and increasing the time under tension. But this must be managed.
If your maximum bench press is 60kg, you can not expect to start pushing 80kg whilst also reducing your rest time under the bar.
This is the point at which you will snap and hurt yourself.
You have to find the weight at which you can handle for starters. There is no point looking at what your friend can lift and trying to lift the same weights as them if you’ve never done it before.
Looking at what stress they have to deal with and expecting to handle the same is counterintuitive. It’s also a method of invalidating your own emotional bandwidth through comparison.
That’s a recipe for disaster and injury.
Once you find a weight that is suitable for you, gradually progressing is the name of the game. Gradual increments are how you learn to lift more but to adapt to the increase, you need to include recovery.
Setting the bar down and giving your body and mind, space and time to recover so that when you come to lift the bar again (maybe a bit heavier this time) You begin from a rested and relaxed state and in the right frame of mind to deal with the challenge.
Asking For Help
Progressive Overload and getting stronger is not a linear process. There will be injuries and there are times when your progress will stall (plateau).
Imagine having to do a big project or hit a harsh deadline and not being able to take on any more weight to your bar.
You’d love to but you’re at a fixed point and progressing past it is just not happening. This is where you may need to ask for a “spotter”.
Regarding your mental health, a spotter could be the friend you speak to over coffee or when you’re with your partner, speaking about your day. Finding someone that can help you lift the bar a bit and take the tension from your muscles to put the bar in the hypothetical brackets so you can rest.
A spotter could be someone at work who can help you with a project or somebody that you can outsource part of a task or a problem, so that you don’t have to do the heavy lifting all alone.
You may not always have the choice to switch off as and when you want to but you can get help and assistance when you ask for it or when you look for it.
In my experience, from the people that I’ve worked with who were suffering from mental illness, to my own struggles which I failed to realise had me in bouts of anxiety and states of depressive lows. We all have mental health struggles.
It is not exclusive to a group of people who take antidepressants, SSRI’s, and reside in hospitals for their safety and the safety of others.
Wanting to wake up in the right frame of mind every day with the strength and the tools to thrive and do well, continuing to progress and managing stress is a commendable goal within itself.
The issue I find at the moment is that, as a goal, it’s not common, popular or sexy to want to achieve a better state of mental wellbeing. As if saying that out loud is exposing a mental fragility which we don’t wish to admit or share.
For some, it’s simply not tangible or quantifiable so it doesn’t show up on the radar in the same way “increasing your bench press by 10kg” does.
It’s much harder to notice or understand stages of progress because it’s not a binary process.
“We Need To Normalise”
I don’t like buzzwords and catchphrases used with terms such as “We Need To Normalise”.
I don’t think we need to “normalise” mental health goals. The phrase doesn’t mean much if anything at all.
To normalise is essentially to accept it’s existence and that isn’t enough to make a difference within society.
For topics that are suggested to be made normal, my viewpoint is to encourage more education and understanding around these subjects.
Maybe a day will come where we encourage mental wellbeing goal setting, accepting it as part of a daily routine and a complete health plan that is just as important as the physical goals that we currently strive for.
