Stress and Fitness Progress: How to Help Your Fitness Clients Manage Their Stress

Stress is an inevitable part of life, whether that's emotional stress or psychological stress. After a while, these stressful periods can have an impact on overall well-being and can slow down a client’s fitness progress.

At KJO Coaching, we understand the connection between stress and fitness goals, which is why we work hard to teach our clients to effectively manage their stress. 

These are the same techniques we teach in the Health Mindset Coaching Certification — the coaching certification where you learn to help your clients end self-sabotage, break through mindset barriers, and make behavior changes for good.

They are tried-and-true strategies that we're confident will help you and your clients manage stress.  

By implementing these stress management techniques, you can empower your clients to optimize their mental and physical well-being on their fitness journey.

How Stress Affects Fitness Progress

Before we get into how stress impacts someone's fitness progress, we need to clarify that what we're referring to in this blog post is chronic stress. The kind of stress that is constant and persists over time.

You likely already know that stress isn't always a bad thing. In fact, we have a blog post that breaks down how you can even use stress to your advantage.

But that's acute stress. In other words, short-term stress, like having a rough day or week at work.

Too much stress makes it difficult for your clients to stay consistent with their fitness journey, making them less likely to adhere to their regular exercise and nutrition protocols.

Stress Creates Hormonal Changes

Stress triggers the release of cortisol, aka the stress hormone. Elevated cortisol levels can lead to increased body fat storage, particularly around the abdominal area, and slow muscle growth.

This hormonal imbalance can impede progress toward fitness and body composition goals, such as losing body fat or gaining muscle mass. It can also have a negative effect on their energy levels, making them less likely to engage in regular physical activity.

Stress Impairs Post-Workout Recovery

Chronic stress can disrupt the body's ability to properly recover after exercise.

It can prolong muscle soreness, fatigue, and overall recovery time between workouts. As a result, your clients may experience decreased performance during their workouts and struggle to make progress in strength or endurance.

Stress Can Lead to Emotional Eating or Stress Eating

Many people turn to food for comfort as a form of stress relief, leading to emotional eating habits.

Stress-induced cravings for high-calorie, sugary foods can sabotage their efforts to maintain a balanced diet and stick to their calorie targets. This can lead to weight gain or impact how quickly they achieve their body composition goals and contribute to feelings of frustration or guilt.

Stress Impacts Sleep Quality

Stress can interfere with your client's sleep quality and duration, leading to sleep disturbances like insomnia or restless sleep.

Inadequate sleep compromises the body's ability to repair and regenerate tissues, including muscles. Poor sleep can also affect energy levels, motivation, and cognitive function, impacting workout performance and adherence to nutrition and exercise routines.

These are just a few examples of how stress affects your client's fitness journey. There are several other factors, including overall health, that are affected by stress, which is why it's so important to guide your clients in managing stress.

Understanding Stress

To effectively support your clients in coping with chronic stress, you must have a solid understanding of the stress response. 

Understanding the physiological and psychological mechanisms involved in stress helps fitness coaches comprehend its impact on the body. Educating your clients about the body's stress response can increase their awareness, encouraging them to adopt effective stress management techniques.

It is essential that you help your clients manage their stress because chronic stress can cause issues with their physical health, slow down their fitness progress, and increase their risk of developing mental health disorders or other illnesses. 

Incorporating stress management techniques into a fitness routine is vital for your client's overall health and well-being.

Strategies We Use to Manage Stress

Managing stress is an essential part of maintaining overall health and well-being.

Effective stress reduction techniques are a key component of balancing out the stress hormone and helping your clients achieve optimal health.

So, what are your fitness coaching clients currently doing to manage their stress levels?

According to the research, these are the most common strategies they are turning to:

The American Psychological Association (2007) found that people eat, drink, shop, watch TV, and play video games⁣ to manage their stress. But, when people using these strategies were asked how well the activities reduce their stress, only 16% said it actually helps them.⁣

Even you may have caught yourself in the act before when you turned to online shopping after a stressful day at work⁣, or opening a bottle of wine after hearing stressful news⁣, or scrapping the bottom of a Ben & Jerry's pint mid-planning for a large upcoming event⁣.

Your clients are doing these exact same things!

Effects of Stress on Your Brain

⁣The problem your clients face is that the common stress-reducing activities they are doing don't do a whole lot when it comes to actually reducing or managing stress, which makes their fitness journey a much harder one than it needs to be. ⁣

So why are we so susceptible to these bogus stress relievers?

Why do we turn to cookies or chips when we experience emotional stress?

Why do we not acknowledge the negative effects on our fitness goals and overall well-being when we can feel that these "stress relief tactics" aren't actually helping us?

When you (or your client) are stressed, your brain seeks relief in the form of reward, for example, “comfort food.”

The common activities above activate your brain's reward system, releasing dopamine. But this promise of reward doesn't always mean we will actually feel better. 

In fact, these behaviors, such as consuming “comfort food,” may end up making you feel worse rather than helping you feel better.

Stress leads to your brain seeking a reward, which leads to you craving whatever substance or activity you associate with the promise of reward. This is a woefully ineffective cycle, especially because it rarely provides the reward that your stressed-out brain is seeking.⁣

So, if turning to a pint of ice cream or a bottle of wine won't help with your stress levels, what will?

Effective Stress Management Strategies

There is good news: we have more effective alternatives than what your clients have been turning to for years.

Here are a few proven ways of reducing mental stress that can help you and your clients. Your clients will become much more successful on their fitness journey once they start implementing these techniques to reduce stress.

Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness meditation involves focusing on the present moment without judgment, which can reduce stress and promote relaxation.

Studies have shown that regular mindfulness meditation can lower cortisol levels and improve overall well-being.

A Deep Breathing Exercise

Deep breathing exercises, such as diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing, activate the body's relaxation response through the vagus nerve and help reduce stress.

Research suggests that deep breathing techniques can lower blood pressure, reduce cortisol levels, and induce feelings of calmness and relaxation.

Exercise

As a fitness coach, you already know the importance of regular physical exercise for overall well-being and likely know it helps to exercise when you're feeling stressed.

Exercise stimulates the production of endorphins, chemicals in the brain that act as natural painkillers and mood elevators. Additionally, physical activity can reduce levels of stress hormones like cortisol and increase the production of neurotransmitters that promote feelings of well-being.

Social Support

Whether it's going to the gym with a workout buddy or spending time with friends, family, or pets, engaging in meaningful social activities can provide emotional support and reduce the effects of stress.

Social support can reduce the body's physiological response to stress and promote psychological resilience to make it easier for your clients to adhere to their nutrition and fitness goals.

These stress management strategies are helpful because they can help shut down your brain's stress response by reducing stress hormones and inducing relaxation⁣. These activities also release GABA, serotonin, and oxytocin (actual “feel good” hormones, not just “reward promising” hormones)⁣, so they play a significant role in reducing our stress levels.

So, the next time you're talking with clients about coping with stress, some questions you both can ponder:⁣

• What do I turn to when I'm stressed?⁣
• How does stress make me more susceptible to temptation and procrastination?⁣

If you want to truly learn how to help your clients navigate stress effectively, consider joining us for the next round of the Health Mindset Coaching Certification. This 13-week program will help you develop the skills to effectively help your clients stick to the plan, stick with you, and achieve long-term success in their health and fitness goals. 

We cover more in-depth stress management techniques and so much more that can make you a more effective fitness coach.

Health Mindset Coaching Certification is recognized by the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), the Athletics and Fitness Association of America (AFAA), the International Sports Science Association (ISSA), the National Board of Health and Wellness Coaches (NBHWC),  and the American Council on Exercise (ACE) as an approved continuing education provider.

Join the waitlist here, and you'll get immediate access to some free primer materials to get you started!

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IG: @coachkaseyjo @healthmindsetcert

Sources

American Psychological Association. (2007). Stress Tip Sheet. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2007/10/stress-tips#:~:text=The%20American%20Psychological%20Association's%202007,or%20more%20days%20per%20month. 

Creswell JD, Pacilio LE, Lindsay EK, Brown KW. Brief mindfulness meditation training alters psychological and neuroendocrine responses to social evaluative stress. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2014 Jun;44:1-12. doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2014.02.007. Epub 2014 Feb 23. PMID: 24767614.

Ma X, Yue ZQ, Gong ZQ, Zhang H, Duan NY, Shi YT, Wei GX, Li YF. The Effect of Diaphragmatic Breathing on Attention, Negative Affect and Stress in Healthy Adults. Front Psychol. 2017 Jun 6;8:874. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00874. PMID: 28626434; PMCID: PMC5455070.