Mental Health and Training (How’re You Feeling?)

Training
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Hey guys. How have y’all been? I know I’m more MIA than not.

Was sifting through the forums and wanted to make a thread that focused on mental health as it pertains to training. I figured I’d put this here, rather than off topic, because I’m wanting this thread to kinda steer in the direction of both mental health and training being something that influences one another. I realize for some, it doesn’t. But this is for those, that it does.

Not everyone’s training gets affected by their mental state or their emotions, but plenty of us do. Those with depression, anxiety, bipolar, IED, etc.

For me personally I have been diagnosed with clinical depression since around 10. I’ve had a few other diagnoses that have taken me a while to recover from.

For me, I absolutely have to prioritize my mental health when it comes to training. Sometimes if I feel a rather intense depression bout coming on, I will purposefully change up my training routine so that I don’t further agitate whatever my mental state currently is at.

For some, harder, more intense, or the same training as regularly prescribed helps others in terms of their mental health, which is great.

What do you guys do that helps you balance your mental health and your training to keep furthering progress?

Note: Also, please feel free to add any therapeutic methods, mindfulness work, grounding, journaling, walks, yoga, breathing techniques, etc.

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Enter Planet Cybertron
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I’ve suffered from depression and other mental ailments from a very young age also. Training is the best thing I’ve ever done for it, so much that I can actually feel the sharp drop whenever I take a few days off. Taking a full week off even though sometimes it’s great for my muscles, joints and all that…I sink like a stone.

I know it’s not good to focus too much on the gym, being so stuck in it that you leave your emotions being determined by how much weight you put up. In contrast though, I fully believe that progress is one of the keys to happiness and even on the days I really don’t want to go in, going in anyway and doing something better than I did previously sets me up for the rest of the day. This is also why I have to go in the mornings.

After my girlfriends Dad died she went out for a long walk on her own and didn’t want me to go with her. I asked her why and her reply was “You’ll never feel worse after a long walk”. I know it’s not a revelation and I’m sure it’s been said a million different ways but it is so true. If i wake up with a particular feeling or worrying about my various issues, I make a point to jump straight up and stick the lead on the dog. Even just 10mins around the block can completely change your day. No matter how hard it sometimes is, sticking around feeling sorry for yourself is never the way to go. There’s a right time to meditate but for a depressed person sometimes just doing something you can enjoy is a great way to not let yourself spiral.

For everyone it’s a balance… sometimes you might sway a little one way, sometimes you might sway another. I don’t know much about physical work but my brother and I are currently helping my father, who used to be a builder, do some decking in his back garden. He has Parkinson’s and dementia but is still there enough to advise us on what to do. Leveling everything up and looking at that bubble, little this way, a little that way just making sure the foundations are straight. In the middle of a bad day, I actually saw that bubble as my mental health. I can do the things in my life that make that bubble go to the left a little; the gym, spending time with family, being grateful for what I do have, walking, helping others, or i can do the things that make the bubble go to the right a little bit; drinking, hanging around toxicity or negativity, eating the foods I know don’t agree with me, slacking off from the gym, sitting on the computer too much etc. It’s very fragile that balance, but you know what? Sometimes I am a good few inches to the left and I can have a couple of drinks, I can indulge, I can have a few days off the gym, I can sit around the house all day. If I go a little too far, spilling over to the other direction, I have the experience, the tools and the know how to reason with myself that this too shall pass and I know what I gotta do to climb back out. Today I feel grand. I know tomorrow, or maybe even later today that may not be the case but I must do what I know helps me, and march on.

Sorry if that sounded silly, I kinda just went off on one there.

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I live in a country that has enough financial and other problems, so medical conditions you mentioned we see on fancy forreign TV shows but they are never heared of in here, so i cant comment. I have no idea how is it when someones life is so safe and secure that people get fucked up in the head. In here we are happy bombs are dropped in Ukraine and not on our heads, so we have nothing to be depressed about.

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I’ve spent a lot of time with people from war torn countries. Trust me - the mental health issues we diagnose in the UK are present in Ukraine. Even more so as the extreme pressure of war pushes peoples minds to odd places.
PTSD, depression and BLPD - the mind does all sorts of things to try and handle the stress.

Ever wonder why alcoholism is so countries with war torn past?

As and FYI @planetcybertron - I’m in a phase right now. I have Cyclothemia. It is like “bipolar light”.
I have times where I feel like I can train full body all day every day. And times where the thought of exercise is almost insurmountable. It takes management. Lots of it.

I have key indicators that I use to monitor my mood. Too many ups or downs and I start to make small changes. If it carries on I make more changes until I hit full on “things are going bad” mode. And I have to take more drastic action.
These are fairly simple. Sex drive is a MASSIVE indicator of mood. Recklessness with money and safety and desire to train. And an inability to focus on a training goal.
For a downs are the same but in reverse. Also eating shit food and wanting to stop training all together. As I feel like I should be more advanced in my results. Where in truth I do okay and I have to put up with intermittent months of “It is pointless any way. Why bother. I wont train and I’ll eat 3 cakes” or “lets run a full body programme 5 times every 6 days whilst doing a 1500 calorie a day cut”.

How do I manage the ups and downs (in relation to the gym) when I get them?
Ups need curving into usefulness. That is all. I just have to keep one eye on reality. I might feel like I have all the energy in the world but I need to be aware that I do not. So I allow myself to train harder and more often. BUT I keep a firm eye on recovery. I also have to have regular reminders of “one goal”.
Downs - training logs help. Looking back at where I started reminds me of what I have done. Brings worth to the process. If I’m low on “energy” anyway trying to go full beans at the gym is only going to sap what little drive I have. So I adjust the workouts. I tend to go a lot easier. My HIIT becomes LISS, and hitting my 10 rep max for 7-8 reps for 2 sets worked a whilst back.

This is doubled edged as you are not hitting PR’s so this can bring me down. But in these states I tend to adopt a mind set of “I’m injured and in the gym. This is not about hitting PR. This is akin to rehabilitation”.

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Yes, im sure they are if someone looks for them.
What i ment to say is that people just dont have time to do that. For example, now when i am 32, i know i have autism. When i was 7, my mom beat the shit out of me, because i was “unpolite little shit who cant greet the guests”. Nowdays, i can say “sorry, i cant use the phone, i have autism” because it takes me 2-3 days to get ready mentally to make 1 phone call. When i was a kid, my parents beat me up because i was worthless shit who cant even call the school and ask for some info.
I am sure people have all these conditions, its just that when you sit in the trenches and bullets fly over your head, you dont really have time to be down, depressed and take a time out.
My grandma used to say that “if you have a depression, carrying a few bags of firewood up the 12th floor will fix it”.
Im sure my country is full of all these conditions, its just that 1 session with the doc costs same money it costs to feed a family for a week so no one, except rich people bother to be depressed or have some other issues.

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So, mental illness is prevalent in your country, but the culture and living conditions prevent the large majority from getting treatment.

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I feel my training is far more destructive to my mental health than constructive. It feeds into my naturally obsessive tendencies and predisposition for self-destruction. It’s a “healthier” venue than most of the males in my family tend to take: specifically alcohol. But it’s also typically the worst part of my day, which is why I do it first thing so that it’s done.

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Did she ever recommend this to a depressed person or otherwise mentally-ill person? If so, did the person do it and was s/he then cured?

You are the second Eastern European on here who has expressed befuddlement as to why Americans are so depressed despite our opulence, comfort, lack of war on our turf, and no history of waiting in bread lines under communism, as if all Americans are swimming in riches and come from loving households and America is not loaded with social ills and highly-alienating elements that make people depressed, suicidal, or nuts.

I am not saying this to be insulting, but this shows ignorance about mental illness and America.

I’ve noticed that some foreigners speak as if they have the inside scoop on America.

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Safe and secure can be boring. You can have a good job, family, house, car… but it can just feel like all you do are the same things on repeat. That there isn’t much point to your existence. That there isn’t anything exciting left.

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“Ennui”

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Interesting topic.

I appreciate a lot of the physical benefits of weight training, especially if I’ve found a program I am really in sync with (the program I’m about to finish falls into this category).

But, at the end of the day, the biggest benefit for me is mental health-related. I tend toward the misanthropic and often require a certain amount of time alone or isolated from others. Being able to go into a weight room with my headphones on and glasses off to blunt outside stimuli has been the best strategy for me to accomplish that.

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This is an interesting topic. In the past, training was an essential outlet for life and job stress. Powerlifting got me through some years that otherwise would have been much tougher. During those years training had a positive impact on my mood the vast majority of the time.

These days it is more hit or miss. I too often let what I can no longer do training wise have a negative impact on my mood. Instead of focusing on all the things I can still do – some of which are greatly improved from my powerlifting days – I tend to focus on what I can’t do any longer. I need to make a conscious effort to focus on all the things I can do and when I do that training still has a positive impact on my mood.

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New Fear Unlocked!

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Maybe I’m the weird one here, but training is my therapy. I feel like shit when I don’t train, I feel lazy and unaccomplished; I genuinely don’t like who I am when I don’t train.

I have diagnosed ADHD and anxiety, and honestly my mental space is ‘okay’ on a good day. Training helps that. Shit day at work? Fight with the wife? Card declined at the grocery store? Hit the gym. It’s literally my therapy.

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There is so much to unpack in your post. But in favour of keeping the thread on topic (as I think it is REALLY important) I think its best to just say I disagree with lots of what you are saying.

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I didnt mean to start a discussion about my opinion. I just expressed it as well as i could, and i am completely ok for people to ignore it. In fact, it got much much more attention than i ever intended for it to do. When i checked back and saw how many people responded to it, i tought “meh, shouldnt have posted it”.

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The whole talk of “no time to be depressed” is bewildering when you learn about how fight or flight works.

I’m sure bullets flying overhead are a major distraction but it doesn’t mean it’s not messing you up. Saving your child from a sabre-tooth tiger is just as distracting and stressful. Trouble at work or being too busy seems a silly thing to be comparable - just having a job for some people seems amazing but it’s not as simple as that, not to your biological makeup it isn’t. Everything is relative. Just because some people or cultures may have certain things easier than others does not get rid of a fight or flight system that is very much a part of us and always has been. Things some people may worry about may seem pathetic and not make any sense but when depression and anxiety rear its ugly head these thoughts can feel very, very real - even if most of it is usually a load of bollocks! Mental illness has a way of often being totally irrational.

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Tis cool. I’m not “upset” or any thing. The reason why mental health issues show up more often in some places that other is a REALLY interesting topic. But I want to keep on topic. That is all

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I often define my illness as “an irrational reaction to normal stimulus”

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It certainly can work both ways. It can be physically and mentally beneficial or damaging. I’ve had periods of my life where I was so obsessed it took a hard toll on my relationships. Where I’d turn down bowling because tomorrow is bench day and you can just straight up forget going out for a couple drinks or eating food from a restaurant. Or more recently where I don’t want to go run around and play with my kids because of the crazy squat session the day before. I am very mindful now with my training to make sure it stays something that adds to my quality of life. I need to train hard and make progress, but it needs to stay in balance with all my other goals in life.

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