Resistance Training and Depression…

New research is showing that lifting weights may have an effect on lifting a person’s mood. It has already been established that exercise can reduce symptoms of depression but until recently most of this evidence had to do with studies based on the effects of aerobic exercise. In 2017 research on the positive effects of resistance training on anxiety were published in JAMA Psychiatry but that particular research did not address the effects on depression. These researchers decided to reevaluate 200 previous studies to see if they could determine if indeed weight training eased symptoms of depression. What they found was all subjects had a decrease in depression no matter how severe the symptoms were. It did not matter how often they weight-trained, whether it was 2 times or 5 times a week. What mattered was consistency. The reduction on levels of depression seemed to occur no matter what age the subject was. The results did not suggest that resistance training was better then aerobics or medication but it showed that there is also another avenue to explore when someone suffers from depression.