Strength or Cardio, which one provides Best Results for Mental Health?
Strength or cardio – this is the common question of those anxious individuals who love to workout. These two kinds of exercises can give benefits to your body over time. So it is essential to know what it can do to your body.
Strength or cardio – you do not need to worry too much because these two have unique benefits. But if you want to improve your mental health, I suggest you should consider doing cardio exercises to increase brain functions.
Cardio workouts are more favorable to increase mental health. Exercise for strength includes weight lifting. But make sure that if you do weight lifting, you know your capacity to lift. The workout you are going to do connects your muscles to your brain so you can assess if you are strong enough to do some strength workout.
If you want to know better about the mental benefits of cardio workout, you should know how it transforms simple exercise to benefit your brain. Choose what activities are suitable to increase your mental capacity.
Now, let us focus on what exercises can be done to benefit your mental health. Knowing both strength and cardio exercises will give you a better overview of activities that you can try.
What are cardio exercises?
I try doing cardio exercises when I want some peace of mind. For instance, doing aerobic exercises help me improve blood circulation. We know that proper blood circulation helps our brain with more oxygen.
It can be recalled that increased oxygen to our brain clears our mind, improved focus, and disregards overthinking or anxiety. Depression is a common issue among us, so that proper cardio exercises can lessen negativity.
Between strength or cardio workout, how the latter exercises help our body?
There are links between exercises and our brains and to be specific the cardio exercises. I am amazed by how the exercises are linked with mental health. But looking into some readings, I encountered the following studies on the difference in strength or cardio exercises.
It releases endorphins and binds endogenous opioids.
Based on the endorphin hypothesis, cardio exercises increase our overall health, from physical to emotional to mental health. How does this happen? It is the result of the release of endorphins to receptor sites in the brain. Also, doing exercises make several subsequent binding of endogenous opioids.
It boosts overall health.
In my experience, I see the difference between exercising before and after and how it affects our life. Boosting our overall health is one of the right reasons why cardio exercises are essential. When you do this exercise, your body temperature will start to elevate, and every time you move, you will feel the blood rushing into your veins.
It distracts negative thoughts and refocuses your senses.
There have been studies that I have read about strength or cardio exercises. And what amazed me is the fact that cardio exercises like running, walking on a treadmill, and meditating can decrease stressful stimuli and feelings. It redirects your focus on things that can help you to be more optimistic.
It increases self-esteem.
I think that any of these exercises, strength or cardio, the most important is the health benefits that we can have. Finding the real power and making our physical and mind to be fit, there is no doubt that cardio exercises are what we need to do. I, for example, have been doing a routine activity that suits my schedule. Also, I have checked my capability to do workouts to test my agility and balance. And if I am feeling stress, perform the exercise to lessen it and increase my happy hormones.
Meanwhile, strength exercises give us some health benefits as well.
In my search to find what are the health benefits of strength training, there have been some studies showing significant results of lifting for mental health. Here it goes.
It addresses depression.
Like cardio exercise, strength exercises help reduce symptoms of depression, especially among adults. Also, I did some low to moderate intensity strength training, and I found out that it changes something in my body and mind. I tend to think less of negative thoughts. So I imagine what about depression. So I want to believe how it helps those individuals who manage to perform mild to moderate depression?
It improves brain function.
Like cardio exercises, studies showed that strength exercises could improve cognitive function. Especially for adults, it enhances the decision making of a person and the focus on an issue or matter. Brain training is not enough to improve reflexes and other cognitive functions. The practice of coordination and balance help the brain to function as it should be.
What can we say about it?
Actually, strength or cardio exercises, either the two, can help our overall health. From physical, mental, and emotional health, these exercises give us excellent results. For instance, when it comes to focusing, these exercises help us to achieve our goal every time we are doing a routine daily.
When I tried it, each session of strength or cardio exercises, there have been many changes. Look closely with each routine and sets, so you will know what to be repeated for your workout.
Assessment of each workout daily is essential to achieve the mental benefits from your workout. It is not really important if you hit the gym or you are doing it at home. As long as you know the proper way of exercising, you will see the difference.
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