Personally for me, how do I find the time to even exercise? Well, that can get kind of tricky.
As a teenager and a senior in high school,
oftentimes I can be under a barrage of stress
I have school life and I also have like my own
home life that I have to deal with.
Most of time it feels very overwhelming and
very very controlling. It feels like something's holding you back, even
though you don't really know what to do.
The way that I kind of try to find time
is by just kind of like organizing my schedule and just taking like at least
an hour out of a day to not have anything else to do but just settle down and just
exercise. For me, kind of the best activity that like makes me feel the
most energetic would be running.
Oftentimes what I do to cope with that or to help with that is I will go for a run.
For some reason jogging makes me feel best.
It doesn't really require any skill set, you just literally
run. You can do it outside, you can do it in a gym.
It offers a good 30 minutes or an hour of just being alone with your thoughts.
and thinking about "what are the reasons of why I'm stressed?"
and "why am I so overwhelmed right now?"
I feel more connected with nature I'm able to
finally take a nice breath of fresh air and it's just it's really just relaxing
after a stressful day at school or a stressful day at home.
I am not very good at running, so it definitely it helps me not focus on work just because I'm so
focused on how out of shape I am.
So, I'm not a big exercise person but the few
times I go to the gym is because I have like a free day in between where my
family is going and it's a big group event so we all go together.
Having other people definitely helps to incentivize me to go as well.
For recreation
I played Pokemon Go.
I play Pokemon Go. It makes walking on a street where it'd otherwise be entirely
boring to walk actually fun. If it's fun it's not exercise it's just something
you do for fun. Like even if I wasn't stressed or if I didn't need if I didn't
need the exercise at all, I'd still do it.
If it's a game I'm playing or if I'm
running or whatever it is I'm doing I can just be focused on that one singular
thing. For example, I'm stressed about maybe writing a paper or working on some
math problems or doing something else that's probably on a computer or paper. If
I'm actually outside doing stuff, I'm using different muscles different parts
of my brain. It literally takes my mind or my body off of whatever it is that
I've been focusing on and focuses on something else so those parts of my
brain or body get a rest and then I get to exercise the other parts that I
haven't been using. So overall, it really balances out well and allows me to be
much more focused going back into whatever it was that was stressing me out
Exercise is scientifically proven to help you manage your stress.
Our bodies are trained to run from situations when we're stressed, so
basically if you exercise it's a way of reducing that nervous energy
and actually getting it out of your system. So for me, exercise is all about
making sure I have a schedule. Whether it be making sure that after
school for two or three days a week that I'm exercising, going to the gym or
doing something even in my own home, getting that schedule down is really
important for me. Also, I think that there's this misconception that when you
exercise you have to get this crazy cardio in. So for example,
I have a knee injury so I can't run but I find other ways of exercising so
whether it be just doing sit-ups in your room, just a way of
getting your heart rate up and making sure that you're getting that
nervous energy out of your system. For me that's that's exercising, that's
the best way of getting it out. It doesn't have to be running.
Definitely, and exercise is going to look different for everyone. I think it feels like a
chore if you're not enjoying it but if you find a way to exercise that you
actually like doing, then you'll make sure to incorporate it into your
schedule. For some people that looks like putting in headphones and shutting out
the rest of the world. For other people that can look like playing on a soccer
team and really competing with other people around you that might be your
friends or might just be teammates you meet at the park. I think also we have a
tendency to beat ourselves up a little bit when we don't exercise and I think
that it's important to not let exercise stress you out when it's supposed to be
a tool to help you reduce your stress. So in general, exercise is important. We all
know that. But find ways to incorporate it into your lifestyle that work for you.