You know when your stress levels are too high – your heart rate starts to race, your skin becomes clammy, your breath become a little shorter and you start breathing more rapidly. It’s a horrible feeling, you become overwhelmed with how much you need to get done and just how little time there is to do it. All of this stress builds up and goes nowhere. Our bodies and brains are telling us through their stress responses to get out of the situation that we are in as fast as we can, but instead we battle on against what is essentially a fight of flight response by our bodies to get us out of a harmful situation, and continue to make ourselves steadily worse, until stress levels become a health issue. The way that we combat this stress, deal with it and reduce it enough so that we can function normally again varies between individuals, people either choose to slow down and relax it all away, or others choose to put the adrenalin of stress to some use.
A Choice of Two Camps
When it comes to finding an avenue to deal with your stress there are basically two camps, two schools of thought that you could fall into. Prescription drugs are not classed as a separate camp here, as they could be used by everyone regardless of the other methods of stress chosen. The first school of thought asks us to slow down, to still our minds and regain control of our bodies. This is achieved through relaxation exercises and meditations. It asks us to reconnect with ourselves and find a sense of balance that will help us to move forwards and give us the tools we need to deal with stressful situations as they arise. The other group, well they have a different attitude, to them the stress must be met head on and released the only way that they know how.
Adrenalin Fuelled Sports
Ask an adrenalin junkie how he deals with stress and he will probably say something along the lines of he scares the crap out of it. The thrill that the build up to performing some kind of extreme sport provides is akin to the way that you feel when you are suffering from a build up of stress. But unlike when we are dealing with stress, there is no release. Extreme sports provide that release. All of the adrenalin that has been coursing around the body finds a way to be released through what could be sheer fear or extreme exhilaration, either way it finds a way out of the body before it causes any harm. The exhilaration of performing the sport releases feel good endorphins in the brain and the adrenalin junkie is one happy bunny.
An extreme release like this won’t work for everyone, but if meditation, yoga and relaxation exercises are really not your thing, try doing some stress busting with an extreme sport, and find a release for all of that pent up stress.
Mark Adamson is a renowned author and frequent speaker on all things sports and exercise – Mark regularly visits Puddle Ducks for more information on sport and exercise for children.