Look, awful breakups happen. We’ve all been there: the pangs of regret, the retroactive search for warning signs, the moment you realize she was kind of right about your habit of leaving sweaty socks around her apartment.
Either way, it’s all about how you respond. You could curl up into the fetal position, call out sick, and inhale pork rinds in your basement until you’re too dehydrated to cry anymore.
Or, when your heart gets crushed, you could turn around and crush some weights.
That’s because sweating, running, and lifting your way through tough emotional trauma isn’t just emotionally therapeutic but might also even boost your physical performance, according to a new report from the New York Times.
Take Brian Eastwood, 35, who explained to the Times how he channeled the anxiety over a divorce and a career shift into a huge new personal best—just over an hour—in the marathon. Or Maya Harmon, 32, who ran seven half-marathons the year she divorced her husband.
Why the burst of energy? One theory is that, when you’re going through tough times, “you [have] those tensions building up in your body,” Ken Yeager, Ph.D., an expert in stress, trauma, and resilience told the Times. “Most people don’t realize the way you release those tensions is movement.”
And running is only one option. If you’re feeling blue, pick yourself off the basement and hit up the gym, and tell everyone to stand back as you channel all that negative energy into the best damn pump of your life.
