7 Mental Health Benefits of Weightlifting

By Kate Harveston

Most people know weight-training is one of the three core components of a well-rounded fitness program. However, did you know weightlifting can help benefit your mental health as well? Pumping iron can minimize the symptoms of both anxiety and depression and even aid those healing from addiction.

The best part is that you don’t have to become a behemoth to reap the mental health benefits of weightlifting. Simply showing up to the gym is half the battle — the rest requires hitting the machines and weight racks. Here’s how you can boost your mental health through pumping iron.

1. You Feel More Confident in Tackling Everyday Tasks

Lifting weights builds muscle and strength. This may not mean you can bench press a Buick, but it does mean you can feel confident offering to carry that 40-pound box down to the storage room at work.

Weightlifting can impart a sense of security in older adults, making everyday tasks such as carrying grocery bags easier. Weight-training also builds core strength and balance, making falls less likely.

2. You Learn the Meaning of Strong at the Broken Places

When you weight train, you create microscopic tears in your muscle fibers. When they heal, you get stronger.

Metaphorically, every time you show up to the gym to lift, you’ve made a positive choice to overcome procrastination and laziness. This may be why weight-training can help alleviate depression. Once you learn you have the inner strength to make one favorable decision, making others proves easier.

3. You Train Your Brain to Rise to a Challenge

Weight-training causes you to use your brain in new ways. When you create and reinforce new neural pathways, you form better habits. This is why those who have pumped iron for years feel lost when they miss chest and triceps day.

Once weight-training becomes a habit, unused brain pathways, such as those that previously carried the chemical trails of anxiety and depressed thoughts, atrophy. By lifting weights, you’re training your brain to abandon negative neural pathways.

4. You Improve Hormonal Health and Boost Circulation

Pumping iron releases endorphins, natural feel-good chemicals in the body. This helps to regulate your hormones naturally, and as any woman can tell you, when your hormones are out of whack, maintaining a healthy mental outlook proves tougher.

Exercise also increases blood flow, and weight-training, in particular, may lower blood pressure. One recent study indicated weight-training resulted in a longer-lasting drop in blood pressure than aerobic exercise.

5. You Increase Your Psychological Grit and Endurance

Part of overall mental health is grit, the ability to stick to long-term goals and endure in the face of adversity. Weight-training keeps you constantly competing with how you performed the day before. The continual striving for improvement cannot help but spill into other areas of your life and help you develop the ability to continue pursuing your dreams even when the going gets rough. Those with a sense of purpose in life manifest less mental illness than those who do not.

6. You Feel Better Equipped to Protect Yourself

Those who have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often feel timid and fearful, especially if the trauma resulted from abuse or assault. Weight-training is unique among forms of exercise in giving you more confidence in your ability to defeat a potential attacker. This confidence boost can help you manage situations you may otherwise find triggering.

7. Simply Showing up Every Day Demonstrates Strength

Conventional wisdom would have you believe it takes 28 days to replace a negative habit, like criticizing yourself constantly, with a more positive one. Recent research, however, reveals the time needed varies from individual to individual. This does not change the fact that showing up to the gym even on down days shows incredible strength.

Not only that, but you also feel a sense of accomplishment each time you power through a tough weight-training workout when you would have preferred to stay on the couch. Accomplishments feel good — it’s why achieving one goal often makes us anxious to move on to the next once we celebrate. The joy you feel each time you finish a workout makes you more likely to want to take other areas of your life to new heights.

Weight-Training Can Improve Your Mental Health

Weight-training boosts your confidence, helps you build new neural pathways and gives you a sense of accomplishment that spills into everyday life. Next time you feel down or stressed out, try pumping some iron — your mind will thank you!

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