Exercise Makes Us Feel Good
Written by Nash Trout on May 8th, 2007 in Exercise at home, Motivation, Workout, Exercise.
This is one of the most important benefit of exercise: it makes us feel good.
Sure there are the long-term benefits like lowering blood pressure, improved strength and endurance, a trimmer physique and the confidence that follows, increasing mental alertness, and reducing your odds of cancer, diabetes and heart disease. But exercise simply makes us feel good.
Two primary chemicals involved in making exercise feel good are cortisol and endorphins.
Cortisol is a hormone produced by the body under stress, such as anger, anxiety or fear, and it ultimately inflames and damages our organs. Exercise burns cortisol, and thereby makes us healthier and happier.
Endorphins are morphine-like hormone molecules that enter the brain’s neurons and park on receptors that normally send pain-signaling molecules back to other parts of the brain. Some say endorphins are even more powerful and yield a more euphoric feeling than opiate drugs such as morphine and opium, which park on the same receptors when introduced to the body.
Exercise stimulates the brain’s pituitary gland to release endorphins, an abbreviation for endogenous (meaning “produced within”) morphine, in the bloodstream.
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Even with a stagnant gym membership or so-so discipline, individual episodes of intense exercise provides psychological boosts aside from the harder-to-see, harder-to-acquire physical and disease-fighting benefits of exercise.
A single exercise session lasting 20 or 30 minutes at 80 percent of your capacity brings on pain-relieving endorphins, according to work by Robert G. McMurray of the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Even one session makes you feel better and clears your head. Once you make a commitment to exercise then you are motivated to keep feeling good every day. After about two weeks of exercise you stay on course.
I truly find exercising as one way to de-stress and clear my mind. After only one hour of exercising, I feel relaxed. Having a nice hot shower and steam bath after the exercise at the gym adds more to the calm state of mind. Not only my muscles are at-ease, but also it helps to clear the worries of the day.
However, it is also important to keep varying the exercise, as our body easily adapts to hormones (endorphins and cortisol) over time. It is important to realize that routine deadens the heart, and you have to change up your exercise regimen. The body always adapts and you need to challenge it. So, vary the intensity, cross train, take dance classes, try a new sport, use a personal trainer for a few sessions, etc. Keep it fresh, and you will get that high!
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May 9th, 2007 at 6:38 am
How much variety do you need in your exercise? Personally I’m prone to fall into the trap of going to the gym on certain days and always do the same routine. It’s just hard for me to create time for other activities like dance or something. Isn’t it limit what one can do in the gym? Do you have any advice for a person like me?
May 9th, 2007 at 8:30 am
Hi Church of Integrity, thanks for leaving a message…I also find your blog interesting!
Now to answer your question: Variation in exercise can be another form of the exercise. For example, in exercising your biceps, what you can do to vary is - on a month, you will use free weights (dumbbell or barbell) on doing bicep curls. On next month, you can use equipment like the preacher curl or the camber curl equipment to exercise. There are different variety of exercises on biceps alone, and most are targetting different aspects of the biceps. I have tagged posts here about “bodybuilding anatomy” so that we will know these different aspects or parts of the muscles, please feel free to browse on them.
Another variety that I also enjoy personally is joining exercise “classes” at the gym. Gyms now are very upbeat about variation and “excercise-entertainment”, some are offering dance - from hip-hop to ballroom - to keep their clients not bored. I hope you will find gyms of that sort to keep you excited about going to the gym and find variation. If not, I suggest that you find in your community those activities and sports (like social sports - badminton, basketball, etc.) that you can join. They are enjoyable and widen you social network. Hope you will find some time.
May 12th, 2007 at 8:37 am
[…] is it’s relaxing effect on our mind. I have covered before in my previous article that exercise makes us feel good. After a workout session, I usually experience a sense of well-being - because I feel good about […]
March 18th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Excellent post and so very true, even after a bad day or when your feeling annoyed, a good workout can really make the difference!
June 24th, 2008 at 1:04 am
I agree completely. It’s important for a person to not get in the mindset of thinking of exercise as a burden and a chore that you have to get through. Focus on the benefits, make it fun.
I like to keep the energy level high with a huge variety of activities. Beach volleyball, swimming, bicycling, canoeing, jogging, martial arts, dancing. There’s so much to do, and I never get bored!
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Great topic we’ve got for today. Not only does exercise make us feel good and look better but exercise also helps us beat stress. The activity we do physically can take our minds off of our problems and deliver us to a peaceful-like state, helping us to cope and manage problems easily.
How much variety do you need for an exercise? Being organized in your routine is more beneficial than having too many variations in your work out. 30 minutes of exercise once or twice a week will keep you going. Adding two hours of moderate exercise will bring you in your best of health. Whether your doing it in a gym, boxing ring, park, or biking or even in the convenience of your home, do something that will not bore you. Remember exercise should be fun and stress-free. Be happy. Laugh. Make friends or simply do something that you enjoy most while doing your routine. Any exercise is better than nothing at all.