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Introduction – Mental health advantages from running
Running is an excellent activity for maintaining your physical health, but there are huge benefits to your mental health as well. Learn how to reframe your runs to maximize the mental health impacts that are available from running.
Running is well known as a tremendous way to keep yourself physically healthy. It burns calories and helps you build up strength. Cardiovascular exercise is important for everyone, and running is one of the most recommended ways to do it.
In addition to the obvious physical benefits, running can also be a way to maintain and improve your mental health. Running on a regular basis can help you destress. It can help regulate your mood, and get you to start feeling good about yourself.
In this post, we’ll look at some of the biggest mental health advantages that can come from running, and how you can think about your approach to running so that you can maximize the benefits that come from lacing up.
Running Helps Regulate Anxiety
Running has a direct impact on managing your anxiety levels. 1 Anxiety often manifests in our bodies as muscle tension, tightness in the shoulders or back, or even in tingling feelings in the chest. By going for a run, you will work multiple muscle groups and by doing so, you will alleviate a lot of the tension that has built up.
Running is a complex movement that requires multiple muscle groups, joints, and systems to all work in sync to be able to keep you moving forward. Your brain has a lot of work to do while you’re running to keep all of that together, so it is also a great way to literally take your mind off of whatever is causing you anxiety in the first place.
While the scientific explanation as to how running combats anxiety focuses on these aspects of muscle tension and muscle use, the easier way to think about it is through the anecdotal evidence of tension release. Going for a run, working up a sweat, using your body in a forceful way to move you through the streets of your community, end up making you feel great. There are very few problems that seem as big or as unmanageable after you’ve gone for a run!

Running Releases Endorphins
Running, like all forms of cardiovascular exercise, releases endorphins. 2 Endorphins are sometimes referred to as “nature’s painkiller”. They are neurotransmitter chemicals that are produced by our bodies to help with pain and to also help with feelings of pleasure.
When we run, we put stress on our bodies. That stress is what is believed to trigger the creation and release of endorphins into our systems. In addition to creating the endorphins to sustain our bodies through the work we are putting them through, the endorphins keep circulating once the run is over. This is sometimes thought to be the “runner’s high” that you hear people talk about.
There are plenty of other activities that produce endorphins in our bodies. Things such as eating, drinking, physical interactions with others, are all things that lift our perception of pleasure and are thought to release endorphins as a result. Cardiovascular exercises, and specifically running, are ways to release a lot of that endorphin-generating activity.3
Running Can be a Natural Anti-depressant
Serotonin is another chemical that is thought to be produced in our bodies the more we exercise. 4 Serotonin is a chemical in our brains that has significant impacts on our mood and overall mental health.
Several anti-depressant medications work by trying to regulate or promote the creation of serotonin in our brains. Running, as well as other forms of cardiovascular exercise, is thought to help promote those same results. 5
Dopamine is another neurotransmitter that is believed to be promoted as a result of running. 6 After a run, many people say they feel more energized and generally better than they did before the run. You might think that running would drain your energy, but these findings make us think that the “runner’s high” is more than just a fun theory!
If these studies show that running can produce things that help us fight depression, it seems to be a good prescription against it! Of course, if you are dealing with depression or any other kind of mental health symptom, please talk to your doctor or to a mental health professional to ensure you are covering all aspects of appropriate care.
Running Helps You Make Connections
One huge benefit of running when it comes to managing your mental health is that it brings a lot of opportunities to forge connections with other runners. Running is an individual activity, but runners love to connect with each other and support each other.
Running with friends is a great way to get together, catch up, and share time doing a healthy activity as opposed to meeting at a bar or restaurant. If you don’t have friends that are runners, you can suggest to some of them that you all sign up for a 5k together. That way you can work together towards a common goal. Sharing that experience of training for a race together, and then getting to the start and finish line together can help bring you closer.
Another way in which you can make new connections is by joining a run club. Most cities have dozens of running clubs to choose from. Depending on your level of experience, you can either join a club that is focused on hard training, or you can join one that is more of a social club. There are running clubs for specific people, such as women’s groups, or LGBTQ+ groups. There are even running clubs in which the run is just a preface to going out to brunch afterwards as a team!
Running can feel lonely at times if you only run by yourself. Joining a group or running with friends can be a great way to not only combat the individualism of the activity but also to make new connections and forget better bonds. Having these shared experiences, expressed through a healthy and positive activity, will bring rewards and benefits to how you feel about yourself.



Running Builds Your Confidence
One of the best things about running is that it is very easy to see incremental achievements. There is so much data available in running. If you use an app to track your runs, you can see the distance, pace, and mile splits immediately after the run. These data points can tell you right away if you are making improvements. If you are training well and keeping your nutrition and cross-training in line, you will definitely see improvements shortly after you get started.
Strava is one of the most popular running apps, and it even has functionality to compare all of your runs over time to tell you if you’re getting faster. Beyond the apps, many runners use smartwatches to record their runs, which then upload the data from the runs into the apps. If you have a smartwatch, then you’ll get additional data points like your heart rate, your recovery rate, and your step cadence. Examining these items allows you to understand where you are doing well, and also understand how you can focus your training to start seeing more improvements.
The point of all this data is to use it to your advantage. If you want to run a 5k in less than 30 minutes, these kinds of data points will give you a lot of information that you can incorporate into your training. Instead of just trying to run faster, you’ll be able to adjust your training plan to get you where you want to go.
With every run, if you see that you have shaved off a couple of seconds from your average mile time, or if you see that your heart rate is staying lower than it was the run before, you’ll get an immediate confidence boost. These small and incremental improvements are a unique aspect of running that make it a great way to get you feeling better about yourself.
It can be easy to get swept up in the data. The multitude of numbers that are available, and the way that the apps can upload your runs to social media, can make it tempting to put too much emphasis on the data. Analyzing your runs is important but try to avoid getting too focused on the time of each mile. The improvements you’ll see will be small, but there’s no need to get frustrated if they’re not happening fast enough!
Running Teaches You How to Set and Achieve Goals
Setting goals is a huge part of running. Once you’ve built up a base and are comfortable with running regularly, you can consider signing up for a race or setting some other kind of goal. Some running goals may be:
- Running one mile continuously without stopping
- Finishing a 5k
- Finishing a half marathon in under two hours
- Running a full marathon
Every runner will have different goals. It is important to select a goal that is appropriate for you and is realistically within your abilities and level of experience with running.
Once you have set a goal, you can create a plan to get you there. For some of the bigger goals, like running a marathon, there are hundreds of free training plans available online to choose from. Make sure you select one that is appropriate for what you want to get out of the experience, as there are some training plans out there that are built for elite runners who have multiple hours every day to dedicate to training.
One of the most beautiful things about running is that as long as you follow the plan you’ve created, you will see the results you want. The only exception to that rule will be if some type of injury happens that prevents you from running or from keeping up with the plan. But as long as you keep yourself healthy, you will see results.
If running a 5k is your goal, there are training plans out there called ‘Couch to 5k’. These plans are written specifically for people that have never run or haven’t run in years. The idea behind the plan is that you start very slowly, with just a few minutes of running added together with some longer walks. You’ll eventually build up enough endurance to make it through an entire 5k race.
Defining a goal, and then sticking to it and achieving it, can have huge positive impacts on your mental health. The satisfaction you’ll feel from having completed your goal will give you a boost that you can carry with you into all of the other aspects of your life. You’ll begin to see how the lessons you learned from running can start to be applied to your professional and personal life. And don’t forget, if you finish the race, they usually give you a medal! Having a physical representation of your achievement is a great way to remind yourself of your accomplishment and to be proud of what you achieved.
Getting to the start line of your race is the ultimate achievement, as you did all of the work to follow the plan to get yourself there. The race itself is just your victory lap!
Conclusion
As you can see, there are several aspects of running that make it a great tool for improving your mental health. The connections you can make, the physical and mental boosts that can come from the activity, and the satisfaction you’ll feel from achieving your goals are all outputs of running. We hope that you’ll consider taking up the sport, and Happy Running!
References
1.https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/can-exercise-help-treat-anxiety-2019102418096
2. https://www.healthline.com/health/endorphins
3.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3104618/
5.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01890/full
Featured Image Credit: Isaac Wendland (Unsplash)
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