How team sports help beat stress
Group exercise ‘better for you’
EXERCISING with other people improves quality of life and cuts stress far more than solo workouts, a study has found.
People who undertook gym classes or team sports had a 26% reduction in stress, plus improved mental, physical and emotional quality of life.
The group who exercised individually put in more effort, but experienced no significant changes in stress levels and only limited improvement to their quality of life.
Dr Dayna Yorks, of the University of New England, Maine, said: “The communal benefits of coming together with friends and colleagues, and doing something difficult, while encouraging one another, pays dividends.” Those doing group exercise showed improvements in all three quality of life measures – mental ( 13%), physical ( 25%) and emotional (26%). They also reported a 26% reduction in perceived stress levels. The individual fitness participants saw no significant changes in any measure, other than in mental quality of life (11%).