Wait, can you lift your mood and overall mental health?
Yes. The healthful benefits of resistance exercise, or muscle-strengthening exercise involving exerting force against a load, are well-established. However, the psychological effects of resistance exercise have remained understudied compared to aerobic activity.
What is this ‘Resistance Exercise’ of which you speak? The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) stated that muscle strengthening exercise, sometimes referred to as strength/weight/resistance training or exercise, is a voluntary activity that includes the use of weight machines, exercise bands, hand-held weights, or one’s own body weight to exert force against a load. Resistance exercise training (RET), then, is conceptualized as the regular accumulation of single bouts/sessions of resistance exercise to generate a training response to enhance or maintain one or more component of muscular fitness, physical, and mental health.
Well, that is fabulous, but how much do I need to do? Current ACSM and World Health Organization (WHO) RET guidelines recommend the completion of at least eight exercises targeting the major muscle groups, performing at least two sets of eight to 12 repetitions each with proper form at least two days per week, progressing the load/intensity across time.
Hmmm, am I the only person not doing that much? No. Unfortunately, the available large-scale epidemiological studies support that few adults report engaging in any muscle strengthening exercise, particularly the recommended two sessions per week.
Whew, I thought I was alone. But wait, why should I do that much? For starters, evidence, much of which has been conducted by our group at UL, supports the anxiety-reducing effects of exercise training overall, including RET, among otherwise healthy adults, chronically-ill adults, and people with a diagnosed anxiety disorder. In fact, our recent work supported that eight weeks of twice-weekly RET that met guidelines elicited large improvements in anxiety and worry, and even reduced the likelihood that people met criteria for subclinical Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Similarly, our recent work and ongoing work with colleagues in the US has shown that RET, particularly RET that meets guidelines, results in large improvements in feelings of depressed mood, depressive symptoms, and even the likelihood that people report experiencing Major Depressive Disorder.
So, is there a way I can become involved? Yeppers, we currently are how much resistance exercise is beneficial among young adult women, and we are looking for participants who would like to begin resistance exercise programs starting in January 2024. If you are a young woman who is interested in adding resistance exercise training to your lifestyle, contact Jennifer Rice (jennifer.rice@ul.ie) or Darragh O’Sullivan (darragh.o’sullivan@ul.ie) for more information.
Prof Matthew Herring, PhD, FACSM.
Physical Activity for Health Research Centre, Health Research Institute.
Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, UL.
Contact: Email matthew.herring@ul.ie @mph8 Research profiles: Google Scholar ResearcherID ORCID SCOPUS
PESS News & Information 