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Does Exercise Help Relieve Anxiety?

Does Exercise Help Relieve Anxiety?

Authored by Marshall on 01/09/2026

If you have anxiety, you’ve probably been told to start exercising as a means of treatment. It might not be what you want to hear, but does exercise help with anxiety at all? And, if so, how does it help?

Learn more about how anxiety and fitness are related and what you can do to take advantage of the connection.

Why So Many People Turn to Exercise for Anxiety

Exercise is often one of the first recommendations for anxiety, and that can be a little frustrating for an anxious person. How are you supposed to work up the motivation for exercise when you’re riddled with anxiety?

It turns out that incorporating physical exercise for anxiety is actually pretty common. A survey conducted by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) found that 14% of people use regular exercise to cope with stress.

According to the ADAA, exercise may be one of the most recommended coping strategies by health care professionals. It’s also likely to be recommended by family, friends, or acquaintances. Most often, it’s because exercise helps both your mind and body. The benefits of exercise are numerous and far-reaching, and so there really isn’t a downside. If you’re able to treat your anxiety and improve your health overall? Win-win. Plus, a healthier body can reduce stress, too, because one of the biggest benefits of exercise is reducing the likelihood of potential health problems.

The other reason people recommend and turn to exercise for anxiety is that it requires nothing but motivation. You don’t have to see a doctor for a prescription, you don’t have to pay for refills, and it doesn’t necessarily require a specific schedule. But exercise does require energy and effort, so it can feel overwhelming to someone already experiencing anxiety.

How Exercise Actually Helps Calm the Mind

Being sedentary hurts your mental health. In fact, studies show that long-term sedentary behavior is a significant risk factor for symptoms of depression. Research shows that people experiencing anxiety tend to get less physical activity, which certainly isn’t going to help improve those symptoms and might even exacerbate them.

Does exercise help anxiety, and if so, how? Anecdotally, exercise is good for reducing anxiety because it literally distracts you from your anxieties. Anxiety tends to require treatment when it becomes persistent, excessive, or intense in response to everyday situations. It’s much harder to focus on those worries when you’re instead focused on running up a hill or completing a complex exercise routine. However, there’s much more to the benefits of exercise than distraction.

Research indicates that 90 minutes of exercise per week is just as effective as pharmaceutical treatment of depression. Even a single 10 to 30-minute exercise session can have an impact. That’s because exercise actually changes the chemistry in your brain and your body, which markedly changes the way that you feel. Beyond the emotional and mental impacts that can be more difficult to measure objectively, here are several measurable effects of physical exercise on anxiety on the body and mind.

Improves Emotional Regulation and Boosts Mood

Studies show just 30 minutes of moderate exercise causes your body to release adiponectin, a hormone produced primarily by body fat that helps with a variety of metabolic processes. In addition to reducing inflammation and improving insulin sensitivity, it travels to the brain and activates the anterior cingulate cortex—the part of your brain responsible for emotional regulation.

Adiponectin also turns on receptors in certain neurons called AdipoR1, which in turn activate a protein called APPL1. This helps to strengthen, or even build, synapses and can also potentially provide a mood-boosting effect.

Improves the Brain’s Response to Stress

Anxiety disorders cause cognitive control impairment, which research indicates could be caused by deficiencies in the way that the prefrontal cortex interfaces with inhibitory systems. One study suggests certain types of exercise, like running, can improve your ability to regulate anxiety by engaging local inhibitory mechanisms in the ventral hippocampus, allowing them to respond better to stress.

Exercise also releases brain chemicals that improve your mood and further improve your ability to handle stress, including dopamine, endocannabinoids, GABA, serotonin, and more. Additionally, exercising activates the parts of the brain that are responsible for executive function. This helps to regulate your amygdala and your norepinephrine, which controls your “fight-or-flight” response and your brain’s reactions to stress.

Improves Overall Health

Exercise releases muscle tension, improves cardiovascular and metabolic disease risk factors, lowers cholesterol, lowers blood pressure, and improves circulation, all of which can reduce your body’s stress reactions.

Best Types of Exercise for Anxiety Relief

How does physical activity help anxiety, depending on the type of exercise you do? The great news is that research indicates that a variety of different kinds of exercise can help. From yoga to tai chi to resistance and aerobic exercise, many physical activities have been shown to have positive impacts on depression and anxiety. In fact, no matter what type of exercise you engage in, physical exercise for anxiety is incredibly effective.

As such, think about what kinds of exercise you enjoy. While high-intensity activities like running or HIIT classes will certainly do the trick, they aren’t going to help at all if you don’t do them. If vigorous workouts aren’t your thing, you don’t have to force yourself to work so hard. Any type of aerobic exercise is going to be profoundly beneficial, as one study indicates that aerobic exercise has the greatest impact on alleviating anxiety. However, all types of exercise are beneficial. That said, it can be hard to motivate yourself to exercise at all when you’re anxious.

Instead of thinking specifically about anxiety and fitness, think about what sounds nice to you. Do you like walking with a friend? Spending time working in the garden? How about a leisurely swim or a meditative yoga class? Getting your body moving is what matters because that’s how you’re going to feel some relief. And if you end up having a good time? Even better.

How Much Exercise You Really Need to Feel a Difference

There is plenty of evidence that exercise reduces anxiety by positively impacting your brain chemistry, allowing you to better regulate your responses to stress. Plus, exercise is good for your body and keeps you distracted, both of which contribute to lower levels of anxiety. But, when it comes to exercise and anxiety, how much exercise is necessary before you feel results? Does exercise help anxiety when it’s just a little every day?

The great news is that it doesn’t take much! Psychologists have found that just one 10-minute walk may be as good as a 45-minute workout for relieving anxiety. Other studies have found that a half-hour session of moderate exercise can significantly reduce anxiety. What seems to be most significant is incorporating exercise that allows you to achieve a transient emotional state for the greatest benefit. This may be why some low-intensity activities like meditative yoga, tai chi, or gardening can be as transformative as fencing or an intense bike ride.

Just one exercise session with higher intensity can help reduce anxiety symptoms for several hours afterward. For ongoing benefits, a regular exercise routine can reduce your anxiety significantly over time, allowing you to manage your symptoms long term. For many people, exercise is just as effective as medication.

When Exercise Might Not Be Enough (Or Can Feel Overwhelming)

When does exercise help anxiety? The truth is that most of the time, exercising is going to help. And exercise is always beneficial to your body, whether or not it helps treat your anxiety. However, for some people, exercise isn’t quite enough to combat their anxiety symptoms. If that’s the case for you, or if you’re so anxious that you feel completely overwhelmed by just the concept of exercising, you might need to consider a different form of treatment to help you.

There is no single solution that works to ease anxiety for everyone, and exercise is no exception. As such, it can be helpful to look at other forms of therapy to supplement an exercise routine. Whether you begin counseling, consider anti-anxiety medication, learn to meditate, or try other therapeutic options, any steps you take to care for yourself are positive. Once you feel stable enough, try integrating exercise again and see how it impacts you. It might be that those extra steps you’re taking are just the solution you need to help manage your anxiety in the long term.

Most importantly, remember that exercise is always going to benefit both your body and your mind. Whether you feel an immediate impact or not, there is no doubt that exercise will help improve your health. If the type of exercise you’ve been doing doesn’t seem to do the trick for your anxiety, switch it up! Consider trying a mind-body exercise like yoga, dance, or qigong that integrates meditative movement and helps get you out of your head. If you still feel stuck, talk to a fitness coach who can help motivate you, guide you, and keep you on track toward meeting your goals.

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