Can Exercise Really Improve Your Mental Health? What the Evidence Says

You've trained at the gym four times this week. You've done it because its good for you. You're trying to look after yourself physically and mentally by following a fitness plan to keep your body in great condition.

And yet you still feel flat.

You hear it in the fitness industry all the time, exercise is good for your mental wellbeing. Check the internet, every health article shares the same sentiment. So if the whole world is screaming it, why doesn't it feel like it's working for you?

Well, we need to better understand how exercise helps mental health; and also understand why, for athletes specifically, it sometimes doesn't. Let's get into it.

First, what do we actually mean by mental health?

Mental health is you emotional, psychological and social well-being. It isn't a switch that's either on or off. It's a slider, and every single person moves up and down it depending on what life is throwing at them. You can be a fit, capable, high-performing athlete and still have a rough month.

How exercise helps mental health: what the research actually shows

A study looked 218 randomised trials covering more than 14,000 people with depression. They found that walking or jogging, yoga, and strength training all produced meaningful reductions in symptoms, and the benefits tended to grow with intensity. The authors went as far as saying these could sit alongside therapy and medication as core treatments.

Then there's preventative effect of physical activity on negative mental health outcomes. A Norwegian study followed nearly 34,000 healthy adults for 11 years. Their estimate was that around 12% of future depression cases could have been avoided if everyone had done just one hour of physical activity a week. One hour. Interestingly, they found this protection for depression but not for anxiety. This highlights the complexity of exercise, and that its not as simple as “move more, feel better”.

So exercise can work, it has done for so many people. But if you look closely at those numbers, you'll spot something. These studies are measured against people doing nothing. Almost none of this research is asking your question, which is what happens when you're already training 15 hours a week.

Why movement works on your mind

• Brain chemistry: exercise triggers the release of chemicals linked to mood and growth factors that support your brain, essentially creating better conditions upstairs.

• Stress rehearsal: training deliberately stresses your body and then lets it recover. Do that repeatedly and your stress response gets fitter, in the same way your legs do. You handle pressure better because you’ve practised coming back down from it.

• Sleep: physical activity improves sleep quality, and sleep is the foundation almost everything else sits on.

• Mastery: doing hard things on purpose is direct evidence that you can cope with hard things. That’s confidence built from proof, not wishful thinking.

• Connection: most sport involves other people, and belonging is protective.

The athlete's paradox: why more isn't automatically better

In a study of 1.2 million people, they found that the sweet spot for exercise was around 45 minutes, three to five times a week. They also found that sessions beyond 90 minutes, or training more than 23 times a month, were linked to worse reported mental health, not better.

What you often see in professional sport backs that claim up. A systematic review of current elite athletes found rates of mental health symptoms ranging from 19% for alcohol misuse to 34% for anxiety and depression. If sheer training volume protected your mental health, elite athletes would be the healthiest people alive but this clearly isn't the case.

Ben Stokes is a good example. In July 2021 he stepped away from cricket indefinitely to prioritise his mental wellbeing, having been in peak physical condition throughout. He later described bottling up his emotions until it all burst out of him. He came back for the Ashes that December and was named England Test captain the following spring.

So, what’s the difference between training that lifts you and training that grinds you down? Often it comes down to whether it still feels like your choice. When you've chosen to do something (because of strong intrinsic motivation) it works very differently in your head compared to when you have to do something purely out of obligation.

Five ways to get the mental benefit from training you already do

1. Protect one session a week with no outcome attached. No times, no numbers, no assessment. Just moving because you like moving. This is often the first thing to disappear and the one that matters most.

2. Put some choice back in. Pick the path of progression, the playlist, or the training partner. Small doses of control change how a session lands.

3. Get outside and get social where you can. Both are doing real work here, independent of the physical effort.

4. Treat recovery as part of training, not a reward for it. Resting does not mean that you are being lazy.

5. Watch the early signals. If you're beginning to dread sessions, sleep badly, have a shorter fuse than usual, or begin to lose interest in the sport you love - these are signs that you should listen to. Take it as information that you need to adapt your approach - its not a sign of failure or weakness.

If you'd like to talk it through, book a free discovery call, or start your first session of The Empowered Programme, a tailored six-session, one-to-one programme built to help you become the athlete you already know you can be.

"I say put mental health first. Because if you don't then you're not going to enjoy your sport and you're not going to succeed as much as you want to."

Simone Biles