Unconventional Ways to Reduce Stress in our Female Clients

Since exercise is a stressor and stress can exacerbate hormonal imbalances; this month we should probably talk a bit about how we can still exercise, but lessen the impact of the stress of the exercise on your female clients.

Yes, exercise is a stressor, but it’s also a stress reliever.

Exercise is a stressor, but it also builds resilience to stress, which means you can take more stress without getting stressed.

However, we can also agree that chronic, unchecked stress is harmful to our health over the long term, and personal trainers have an opportunity to ensure that the training they provide falls in the “stress relief” and “resilience building” categories – rather than flogging the shit out of their nervous systems and stressing out an already stressed out system.

This month we’re going to talk about unconventional ways to reduce stress in your female clients. Yes, yoga, meditation, being slow and mindful are good stress and nervous system relievers, but they’re not always compatible with a personal training session!

So in the interests of having our cake and eating it to, here are my top tips for mitigating stress in my sessions with women.

1) Grounding – Touching the Earth

I am a big fan of nature immersion for stress relief, but the good news is that you can “ground” in the electrical sense on cement too. Spending at least some of your session bare foot and in direct contact with the ground can^{1 2 3}:

• improve your immune system
• decrease inflammation
• calm an autoimmune response
• speed up wound healing
• decrease muscle soreness after a bout of exercise
• triggers feelings of wellbeing
• down regulate the nervous system

and more…

2) Making my clients smile and laugh

Now the association between laughter and happy hormones is a chicken and egg scenario. What comes first? Either/or!

We know that when you fake a smile you can trick your brain into feeling happier⁴, and visa versa, when you’re feeling happy you’re likely to smile and laugh easier. So it doesn’t really matter what order we do things in – fake the smile and trigger happy hormones, or make happy with a joke, gift, or game and trigger the smile – what matters is that it happens!

Fake smiling also has a knock on effect to the happiness of the people around you⁵; in other words, if I fake the smile, I will make my clients happier, help them think more positively, and boost their enjoyment of the session without having to force anything for them!

So in my sessions, understanding that exercise is a stressor and wanting to boost the anti-stress elements, I trigger happy, positive hormone shifts in two ways:

1. I smile and laugh, and joke around a fair bit, whether I feel like it or not,
2. I include games – usually in the cardio component, because they’re more likely to produce a smile and cheekiness than interval training.

And that’s it! Easy peasy!

3) Having Coffee Together after Their Session (except maybe order the turmeric latte)

Right, so this may be controversial because of the impacts of caffiene on cortisol, but I would argue that it doesn’t really matter what the drink is. I’ve mentioned a Turmeric latte in the title of this segment, because turmeric is anti-inflammatory, but some inflammation is good for our bodies, and will actually help with healing after a bout of exercise, so even that isn’t compulsory!

The reason I encourage my clients to go for coffee after their session is because they go together. The sense of community⁶, social support⁷, and being a part of something (belonging⁸) is unparalleled if you’d like to reduce stress in your female clients after creating stress through exercise. It is a wonderful, healthy, and powerful way to wind down after training, whatever drink you order!

Another reason why I like them to go for coffee afterwards is that it stops them going straight into chores. Women will rush to my sessions, call the kids while they’re at training to make sure they are up and getting ready for school, then rush home to do the washing or straight to work. Stopping for a coffee with their community puts space in between their session and their rushing, which will give their nervous system a bit of a break too.

4) Train them in the morning

Now, I have to emphasise, that consistency trumps literally everything else when it comes to exercise. Which means that if the evening is your only window to exercise, and you can and you are exercising consistently in the evenings, then that is already more important than what I am about to say, and you should keep doing that.

The reason I like my female clients to train in the mornings is solely due to stress and it’s impact on the hormones that affect their diurnal rhythm, the one that controls when to sleep and when to wake. We know that women are disproportionately affected by sleep disorders^{9 10}, they’re more likely to wake up in the middle of the night and not fall asleep again for hours. They’re more likely to be wide awake at 4am in the morning running through their “to do” list in their brain. They’re more likely to be tossing and turning in the evenings, failing to fall asleep. Women also transition through much larger physiological events that can impact their sleep, such as pregnancy and menopause¹¹.

If you exercise in the evening, a body with that problem will be “woken up” and energised when they’re meant to be winding down. A person who doesn’t have a problem with sleep will be able to wind down again, but the one that does will be “wired and tired”.

Exercising in the morning solves a lot of these problems, and means that we can harness the benefits of exercise to sleep better, without the downsides. Exercising in the morning also means they make better food choices throughout that day, their alertness, focus, mood, and overall energy will be improved¹². They’ll experience better blood glucose control, better blood pressure changes, and crucially, better sleep that night¹³.

Sunrises and sunsets are particularly potent for circadian rhythms, which could be a deciding factor between the 630am session and the 10am session¹⁴!

Any exercise is better than no exercise, but when your client is also chronically stressed, than morning exercise is even more beneficial.

Other ways you may consider mitigating stress:

1. Boxing – in an environment where women are taught to be meek, quiet, and small, boxing can be an empowering outlet, however it wasn’t “unconventional” enough for this article!!!
2. Touching and hugging – appropriately of course! We need 8-12 hugs a day to maintain adequate hormone balance, particularly in our “love” and “connection” hormones, oxytocin and dopamine. If your client lives alone, you might be it for her(15)!

Many of these tips are very easy to implement into your regular training routines, without the need to drastically change what you do or why your client comes to see you.

If you’re ready to start training women better but do not know where to start, or you’re a client interested in our Women’s Strength and Conditioning Program, you can book a free 30min call with Clare here.

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