Healthy Stress Management vs. Training to Failure

Stress is ever present, so you can't shelter yourself forever. Since you can't eliminate stress, you have to learn to deal with it in an efficient way. Stress shapes who we are and how we interact with the world. All change is basically a form of stress and it's probably the most common source of stress in our modern, fast paced world. That means we have to deal with change to be able to manage stress efficiently.

Like many people, I have a hobby of running that relieves stress. I've been thinking about therapeutic properties of regular, aerobic exercise, but I also want to approach this as if I am building up my health, NOT breaking it down, recovering, and overworking again- cycling through pain and exercise with a "No Pain, No Gain" attitude. That's what I see in many of my clients who do marathons and triathlons, unless they have already taken several years to build up to that elite status.

That being said, we must start slow and steady- a little bit every day. Let's go for a short, peaceful run to build up some oxygen and pump the heart, instead of training to exhaustion. 

Here's a great video about how important it is to use your Brain to understand how Stress is affecting your Body- to have a healthy perspective about it.