Mr. Musa Mohammed, the Head of Sports of Skyline University Nigeria (SUN) has encouraged students of the university to embrace a lifestyle of regular exercises at home. Stating that taking up exercises helps to build a strong defence against anxiety and stress. “Stress can be exhausting! Long term stress can lead to lack of concentration, an inability to make decisions, declining performance, motivation and ultimately can lead to illness and sickness. Within teams, it can contribute to conflict and disharmony. Exercise is proven to have benefits for the mind that can lower stress, reduce feelings of isolation and help ease anxiety and depression”, he stated.
This important advice was delivered on Friday, July 3rd, 2020, at the Sports online training organized to help students understand stress and anxiety; how it can become a negative force. The training is a no-nonsense approach to taking back control from stress and anxiety as well as provide a wealth of tips and tactics to help reduce stress, manage pressure and improve wellbeing at home.
While speaking on the theme of the event, ‘Sun exercise and practice for anxiety and stress relieve at home’, Mr. Musa urged students to take with them a simple but powerful strategy to tackle stress overload both in the moment and overtimes. Along with this strategy, he administered a range of tools to help participants reduce personal stress levels, improve their ability to relax and recharge their energy levels.
Mr. Musa outlined the strategies thus; “Team sports may be off the agenda, given the nature of the isolation in the country, but you can certainly exercise on your own at home. Moderate movement for 30 minutes per day is good for your health. When you’ve established that as a daily routine, then your day will be better structured as well. You can walk up and down the stairs in your home or you could jog in place inside, or do some shadow boxing, or jumping jacks, sit-ups, push-ups etc.”, the Head of Sports added.
He added that exercise is proven to have many benefits for the mind, reduce the feelings of isolation and help ease anxiety and depression. “During this lockdown, the new rules of life can pull our mental health into a damaging spiral. By staying at home, our anxiety and stress level can be heightened by worries over anything and everything – jobs, money, living arrangements, & the pandemic itself and those feelings are compounded by an absence of the great ways in which we usually relieve them”.
Earlier, while giving the opening address, the Registrar of the university, Mr. Firoj Kumar Rauta appreciated the students for their excellent reception towards the events taking place in the university. He stated that the training will assist to reduce stress more easily and will increase the positive self-influence of students. He urged the participants to pay keen interest in the event as this will be beneficial to their general wellbeing.