STRESS MINI SERIES: PART 3 OF 4

In the first two parts of our stress mini series we went over the basics of understanding stress and what signs of stress might look like - so if you haven’t read them yet go back and have a read, then what we talk about here below will make even more sense as follows on from those articles. Now let’s get into some useful tips and suggestions to help manage your stress response in your body.

As we mentioned previously, a whole host of things impact our stress levels and our stress response, and changing or impacting some of these factors will be much bigger undertakings and longer term, while some can be impacted in the here and now. The longer term changes are the bigger ‘life changes’ that can feel quite drastic or uncomfortable to think about so for any of those kind of changes, take your time to really think about it and what the impacts may be.

For this we are talking about changing job if it is causing too much stress or impact on the rest of your life. It could be moving house if you live in the city and you aren’t enjoying city living like you used to. There could even be people in your life that are causing you undue stress, or some unresolved issues that may need resolving to allow you to really move on unburdened. All of this is big, quite heavy stuff but I just wanted to highlight it as it would be wrong to ignore them given how big the impact usually is on people.

For some shorter term fixes that we can look to use straight away to reduce our stress response, here are 3 key areas to focus on:

1. Breathing

There are some amazing books on the power of breathing (I’d suggest Breath by James Nestor for more general, or The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown for more sports specific) and without diving into huge detail, in short we can calm our nervous system by doing some breathing practice. If you’ve never tried it before, you might be sceptical or thinking that it sounds ‘airy-fairy’, so all I’d say is try it first before you judge it. We want our breathing to be light (no sharp/deep inhales or exhales) slow and relaxed. The average person breathes 15 times a minute and mostly through their mouth, whereas optimal is 6 times a minute and have the ability to breathe through our nose too. Here is my go to for beginners:

5 minutes of breathing

• 3 seconds of light inhale

• 3 seconds hold

• 5 seconds of exhale

• 3 seconds hold

Having a longer exhale than inhale helps to signal to the body to calm. If you can do this through your nose then great, if not then don’t worry, just work up to it. If you have a smart watch you can check to see if your heart rate has dropped over the 5 minutes. It may not be drastic, but if that can work in 5 minutes imagine the impact if we can build more of these breathing patterns into our everyday habits (why not practice it while walking the dog, or driving to work).

2. Sleep

Probably obvious one, but really focusing on good habits around sleep time will really give you the best chance of getting good, restful sleep. Try to think of going to bed as giving yourself ‘sleep opportunity’. Sometimes you can’t control what happens in the night (your child is poorly so you are up and down, dog barking, next door have a party…), but if you consistently give yourself the best chance then over a couple of weeks this will start to add up.

8 hours is a great aim for most people, but if you only sleep 5 hours now, then that will seem a big jump, so try to nudge it up in 15-30minute increments over time. So if you know you need to get up at 6am, to give yourself your 8 hours of sleep opportunity, you need to be in bed head on pillow by 10pm (not turning the tv off downstairs at 10pm!).

There are a few other things to check, to really help your sleep as best as possible:

• Pitch black room - black out blinds, eye mask, whatever you need!

• A cool room - although cosy, too warm a bedroom will hinder sleep

• Try an ‘screen curfew’ 30 minutes before sleep (blue light from devices stimulate the brain instead of relaxing it!)

These tend to be the biggest three to have the best impact for improving people’s sleep. Other things like getting a good mattress and keeping the bedroom tidy can also help, but if you nail the main three you should really start to feel better when you wake up in the morning.

3. Aerobic Exercise

This might sound counter intuitive, but focusing your exercise on some steady state aerobic training works wonders for your body. For aerobic exercise we are looking at the 6 or 7 out of 10 effort level, where you can still speak to someone if needed. If you feel the ‘burn’ in muscles, that is lactic acid building up and you are pushing too hard. This may feel slow at first if you haven’t really done much of this before, so go nice and slow and try to build up time as you go. If in doubt, reach out and we can answer any questions!

Steady state aerobics can be whatever you want - swimming, running, dancing, quidditch, anything. The effort level of 6 or 7 out of ten is to get our heart rate to around 65% of it’s maximum, and spend as much time there as possible. This will have carry over to almost everything in your body - yes it will help stress response, but should also improve sleep, will allow your body to create energy more efficiently, to digest food more effectively, the list goes on. My suggestion is a concentrated block of 4-8 weeks of steady state aerobics will have you feeling drastically better and your body functioning better on the inside too. So turns out cardio isn’t overrated - it’s actually the complete opposite!

Hopefully there is something useful in there for you. Try it out, and let me know how you get on! As always, any questions please just reach out. For the last article in the series we will go more specifically into the link between stress and your training, the different implications of training styles and how to plan training based on how your body handles stress.

Stay healthy,

Ben