Stress Relief: Go Punch Something!

Have you ever been sitting in a meeting and thought, "Man, that guy needs a good punch in the head!" Well, obviously following up with that thought during the meeting would change the mood of the meeting, probably defeating the meetings overall purpose, whatever that might be.

Most of the people that go to the gym begin doing their new fitness routines for esthetic reasons. They either want to lose weight, add some muscle or both. But right away they begin to realize that after they go to the gym they just feel better. This is partly because self-esteem is improved immediately upon working out, according to studies. But the primary reason is working out is great stress relief.

A classic example of my clients and stress relief is one woman, we'll call her Lisa, that was finding a hard time fitting in her workouts because the amount of work she was doing. Lisa told me that she was going to have to take a break from our training sessions because she needed to focus on work for a while. She said there was too much for her to do. I said OK. So she focused on work.

About three weeks went by before I saw Lisa again. She had quite a story to tell me. It seems after working and not working out, she became exceedingly stressed out. She went and saw her psychiatrist and they discussed what was going on. After a few sessions with the psychiatrist, they both realized that she was without her primary stress outlet: fitness. Her psychiatrist recommended she get back to the gym. Now she began her training sessions anew, focusing now not just on the esthetics but taking care of all her stress relief at the same time.

Not everyone is able to go through the eye-opening experience that Lisa had, but everyone should know that fitness and working out is amazing for stress relief. I have found even further stress relief can be found by making some of a fitness routine into a striking workout.

Veronica vents her stress doing punching drills.

Credit: Stephen Schultz

Copyright: Stephen Schultz