This is part two of our four-part series of stories exploring stress, the nuances that come with the psychological and physiological response, and its relationship with running.
Sales & Deals relief. And that’s great! The research from the International stress does show that staying active will help you better handle things that stress you out in life.
But exercise is also a form of stress, in that it breaks your body down in the moment; the growth phase—the gains—don’t happen until you stop exercising and allow your body to adapt to that stress. “When you’re training, you want to purposefully stress your system slightly beyond your capabilities so you can grow,” explains Rachele Pojednic, Ph.D., associate professor and program director of exercise science at Norwich University in Vermont. “A little bit of stress is good for your body, but too much is detrimental.”
There’s a fine line to walk when you’re using a stressor to help relieve stress—it can be hard to tell when it’s too much. Also, your body can’t tell the difference between physical stress, like exercise, and the mental or emotional stress that comes from working on a big project at work or caring for a sick family member.
No matter what you’re worried about, “as your stress hormones shoot up and your body tries to figure out how to best cope with whatever is causing that stress, everyone reacts differently,” explains Amy Morin, Best Folding Treadmills.
Because we’re all so stressed all the time—nearly a quarter of adults rated their average stress between eight and 10 on a scale of one to 10, according to the 2023 Stress in America report, released in November—it’s easy to downplay the symptoms of stress. But it’s important to recognize them, especially because so many of the symptoms negatively affect things that would influence performance: sleep, nutrition, focus—some people may lose their appetite, some might not be able to sleep, and others might feel paralyzed, like they can’t get anything done.
So, understanding how life stress affects you is as important as understanding the physical stress that comes with your training load. These are some of the less obvious stress symptoms in runners to look for so you can recognize when you’re overdoing it on the stress scale. Plus, advice on how to better manage that tension.
5 Surprising Stress Symptoms
1. Self-Doubt
Stress creates anxiety, and anxious feelings lead to anxious thoughts, says Morin: Can you hit your workout paces? What’s going to happen if you can’t squeeze in today’s scheduled run? Are you good enough to hit your goal on race day? “When we think that way, we look for evidence that reinforces that—and we screen out evidence to the contrary,” Morin explains, which sets us up for this downward spiral of self-doubt.
There’s also an element of control that comes into play: You want to hit your paces or you want to force your workouts, because staying on top of your training may make you feel in control when every other aspect of your life feels like chaos. But, perfectly hitting every workout on your plan isn’t the answer. In fact, perfectionism is a predictor of injuries in athletes, 2018 research from the What You Need to Know About Running With Scoliosis determined. So scaling back or removing some of the pressure you’re placing on yourself to perform will actually help you more in the long run.
2. You’re Unmotivated to Run
make you feel better overall. Heres what to do motivation to run can be pretty destabilizing. But that’s a pretty normal symptom: “When we’re experiencing stress, our fatigue goes up and our ability to recover goes down,” says Morin—a combo that saps your motivation. People with a higher level of psychological stress reported lower levels of exercise participation in a 2023 study published in Life, resting heart rate review in Sports Medicine determined.
Physiologically, “that burnout effect is going to have a direct relationship with metabolism,” says Pojednic. “It’s going to activate your hypothalamus [the area of the brain that produces hormones responsible for body temperature, heart rate, hunger, and mood], causing changes to hormones, including cortisol, that could become maladaptive; it’s going to change the way in which you burn glucose in your system; it can lead to the initiation of things like insulin resistance, which is going to have a direct effect on the muscles that you’re relying on to do activity; it can cause weight gain, which can be demotivating; and it can lead to increased susceptibility to infections”—all of which can make you less likely to want to run.
3. It Takes Forever to Recover from a Workout
Published: Mar 5, 2024 inflammation. This is a positive reaction in certain doses. But when you’re training and dealing with chronic stress, another source of inflammation, you start to tip the scales in the wrong direction.
“Your immune system only has a certain capacity for stress,” says Pojednic. Once your cumulative burden of stress—a.k.a. “allostatic load,” according to research published in Sales & Deals—exceeds your ability to cope, it will lead to poorer health outcomes.
mental health professional muscle recovery, a 2012 study in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise determined. Essentially, “your body doesn’t have the capacity to repair your muscle,” Pojednic explains. “And if you’re not rebuilding that scatheless tissue, continuing to train day after day further degrades it.”
When you’re in a state of high inflammation, your body also tends to be at an elevated temperature, which prevents you from getting a good night’s sleep—the single most important factor in exercise recovery, according to 2019 research from the International Heres How Stress Affects Your Running Performance.
4. You’re Constantly Running to the Bathroom
For most runners, GI distress is diet-related. But perceived life stress and anxiety levels positively correlated with gastrointestinal distress in a 2017 study in the What You Need to Know About Running With Scoliosis that involved 150 runners. Exercise releases stress hormones like cortisol, and chronically elevated cortisol levels may lead to impaired digestive function—impaired absorption of micronutrients, abdominal pain or discomfort, and local and systemic inflammation—according to 2019 research in the journal Integrative Medicine.
But stress-related GI issues are not just about running to the bathroom, says Morin. “For some people, it’s about losing their appetite; for others, it’s about diarrhea and vomiting,” she explains. And, as any runner who’s ever frantically looked for a port-a-potty midrun knows, “that creates even more stress,” Morin adds—a downward spiral for your mental health.
5. You’re Running for External Validation
Remember: Exercise is a stressor, which means it acutely increases benefits to logging activity, but when you’re using platforms like Strava or Instagram for “recognition” versus supporting other athletes, you’re more likely to experience higher stress levels and develop obsessive exercise habits, a 2020 study published in the journal Information Technology & People found.
“For a lot of people, running is their identity, so when you’re struggling, what do you do?” says Morin.
Looking for external validation can be tough, because it naturally invites comparison—“and we know that social comparisons definitely affect our wellbeing, especially when they reinforce the idea that ‘everyone else is doing better than I am,’” she adds.
How to Cope With Stress As a Runner
If you’ve been struggling with any of these symptoms, or you’re dealing with other common indicators of stress—you’re edgy and irritable, you can’t focus, you’re getting headaches—then it might be time to make a change. Understanding how to better manage your stress will boost your performance and make you feel better overall. Here’s what to do.
1. Be Aware of Your Cumulative Stress Load
Just like you track your weekly training volume, you should be cognizant of your cumulative stress load—not just from exercise, but from other areas of your life. “People are generally terrible at compartmentalizing stress,” says Morin. “Life stress will spill over into other areas of your life, and we often underestimate our ability to manage that stress.”
It’s really important to be able to look at what’s creating stress in your life (even things that seem as minor as wearing a running watch or using social media), and, if you can’t eliminate something, to figure out ways to adapt your training to accommodate moments of higher stress. For example, if you’ve been on edge about a big presentation at work all week, maybe that’s not the best week to do a super intense speed workout.
2. Pay Attention to Your Body
Too often, runners override their body’s cues in favor of what their training plan or their wearable device recommends. It’s crucial to understand what is or isn’t normal for you. “It sounds very simple, but paying attention to your body requires understanding things like ‘I’m tired because I’ve done some good training’ and ‘I’m tired because I’m overdoing it,’” says Pojednic.
The goal is to do just enough work that you find that sweet spot that’s most beneficial, she adds—“but when you’re in a moment of stress and overwhelm, it’s really easy to blow through those cues and not want to rest because it’s a place that you need to sit in, which can be really uncomfortable.” But isn’t running all about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable?
3. Understand It’s Okay to Take a Step Back
Health & Injuries training plans aren’t meant to be written in permanent ink; they should be flexible and adaptable to your life, because sometimes things come up.
“You have to know that if you have something really stressful going on, you also need to understand what will be relaxing and recharging,” says Morin—and it’s not always running.
Only you really know how stress affects you, so only you can come up with the right way to manage that stress. That may mean taking an unplanned week off from running, or scaling back your workouts, or leaving your watch at home, or deleting the Strava app. “It’s about asking yourself ‘how do I control the things I can control?’ and create that balance the best you can,” says Morin.
4. Track Resting Heart Rate
It’s very easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer number of data today’s wearable devices provide, but if there’s one metric that can be a good indicator of how your body is handling stress, it’s your resting heart rate, says Pojednic. Your resting heart rate is a measure of how many times your heart beats in a minute while you are at rest (usually first thing in the morning).
Your average resting heart rate should be a range—usually between 60 and 100, but it can be as low as the 40s for active people. But “this data point is important to keep an eye on, especially if you’re in periods of physical or mental stress,” says Pojednic.
This Is Your Body on 1,000 Extra Calories a Day alcohol consumption, traveling to a higher altitude, or a bad night’s sleep, a continuous increase of 10 beats per minute or more can be an early sign of elevated stress levels, overtraining, or sickness. When you notice this higher heart rate, it’s probably time to take a rest day Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics recovery run focussome people may lose their meditation, and stress may have an impact on exercise adoption, maintenance, and relapse, a 2014.
5. Talk to a Professional
Running can only go so far as a coping mechanism for stress. Using running to escape your stress—a form of “self-suppression”—can lead to negative effects, including exercise dependence, a 2023 study in Frontiers of Psychology determined.
“If your stress is affecting your functioning—in that you can’t sleep, your appetite has changed a lot, it’s affecting your ability to work, all those kinds of things—for more than two weeks, I would suggest going to talk to a Surprising Symptoms of Anxiety in Runners,” says Morin.
A professional can not only help you get to the bottom of what’s causing your stress, they can also help you develop better tools for dealing with it—in the moment and over the long-term. A psychologist, psychiatrist, or licensed professional counselor would be the best person to help you deal with stress-related concerns, whether they’re related to sports performance or life in general.
