Jan. 28, 2026 — Depression is like a playground bully. Only instead of your lunch money, it demands your motivation and self-esteem and won’t stop hounding you until you surrender both.
Every comic book fan of a certain age remembers the classic Charles Atlas formula for handling bullies: Build your body, stand up for yourself, and watch your nemesis slink away.
As it turns out, that strategy is a powerful deterrent for depression too.
Exercise, including resistance training, offers benefits comparable to those of therapy or antidepressants, according to a large new review of more than 70 randomized trials. Physical activity “provides an option for people experiencing depressive symptoms,” said Andrew Clegg, PhD, the lead author and a professor at the University of Lancashire in England.
The finding builds on decades of research showing that physical activity can have a profound effect on mood. Exercise can reduce inflammation, which is linked to depression, and reset circadian rhythms, improving sleep. It can also trigger the release of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein that supports nerve-cell growth and is associated with improved mood regulation.
Here’s the catch: Exercise and mood disorders have a stubborn, two-way relationship. As the review explains, depression drains the energy and motivation to exercise, while low physical activity may worsen depression.
Luckily, the data provides a way out. By understanding a few key insights, patients can escape this cycle and use movement as a tool in their treatment plan.
Lesson 1: You don’t have to pick just one treatment.
“Depression is one of the most debilitating conditions a person can have,” said psychologist Michael Noetel, PhD, associate professor at the University of Queensland in Australia. “Our research found it lowers life satisfaction more than debt, divorce, or diabetes.”
A serious illness like that can take more than one treatment to manage. Noetel’s 2024 review found “moderate, clinically meaningful effects” when exercise was combined with antidepressants or psychotherapy. A small 2018 study found that patients with major depression did best with a combination of all three — exercise, medications, and therapy.
Someone with depression “should get a psychologist and an exercise plan, whether or not you’re taking antidepressants,” Noetel recommends.
Lesson 2: Exercise, like therapy, shouldn’t be easy.
Before analyzing the data for his review, Noetel assumed that the best results would come when participants with depression eased into a fitness program. But that wasn’t the case.
“What mattered was how hard you pushed yourself,” he said. “Vigorous exercise worked better than gentle exercise,” even if the workouts lasted just 10 to 20 minutes.
Generally speaking, “vigorous” exercise means you can no longer carry on a conversation while doing it. That threshold varies for everybody, depending on your fitness level.
Lesson 3: No type of exercise is clearly superior to others.
This was another finding from that large new review mentioned earlier.
In Noetel’s research, there was solid evidence for walking, jogging, yoga, and strength training in treating depression.
For major depression, dance showed surprisingly strong benefits. “But it came from only five studies,” Noetel said, with a total of 107 participants, most of whom were young women. “We can’t draw strong conclusions from that.”
One challenge, Clegg said, is that much of the evidence is fragmented, stemming from “a large number of small trials in diverse populations.” Long-term evidence is sparse; the labor-intensive demands of exercise studies mean they tend to span weeks or months, not years.
That’s why, Clegg said, we can’t yet say “what works best for who.”
Still, the research offers some clues.
In Noetel’s review, strength training and bicycling seemed to produce better results for women, while yoga and tai chi worked better for men.
Older participants saw more benefits from yoga, and younger ones did better with strength training.
One noteworthy finding: Dropout rates in most studies were surprisingly low, especially for strength training and yoga.
“Depression might make it harder to sign up for a program like this, but it doesn’t seem to stop them from coming,” he said. “With support and accountability, most people kept going.”
Speaking of which …
Lesson 4: Don’t go it alone.
Making exercise a team effort serves two purposes.
First, it reduces the social isolation that’s one of the most pernicious symptoms of depression. Second, it puts you in a setting where you’ll probably push yourself a little harder than you would when exercising solo.
That’s why Noetel recommends, when possible, working with a trainer, taking group fitness classes, or at least finding someone who’ll walk with you. Accountability is the key — having someone who expects you to show up.
If you don’t have those options, you can still be accountable to yourself by making concrete plans to exercise. Put your workouts into your personal calendar, like any other appointment or meeting.
You can also track what you do in each exercise session, using whatever tool you prefer — movement tracker, spreadsheet, or good old-fashioned notebook and pen.
Lesson 5: Seek mastery.
Research suggests that self-efficacy, aka mastery, is an important driver of exercise’s antidepressant effects.
“You get a sense of mastery when you lift heavier or run further than you thought you could,” Noetel said. “Depression tells you that you can't do valuable things, that you're stuck. Exercise proves your brain wrong. You learn that you can change, build new habits, and get better at things. That's powerful medicine.”
Resistance training and running both lend themselves to systematic progression and reward you for pushing yourself.
Mind-body practices like yoga and tai chi offer mastery through focus and diligence.
Lesson 6: Results take time.
This is true of any treatment, including therapy and antidepressants. There’s also the trial-and-error doctors and patients typically go through to find out the right dose of the right medication — the one that brings the greatest relief with the fewest side effects.
With exercise, there are any number of physical, financial, social, or motivational limitations that could affect someone’s ability to find an activity they enjoy enough to reduce their depression symptoms.
That’s why Clegg hopes people keep the research in perspective.
Figuring out which treatment is best for you, separately or in combination, requires both patience and professional guidance.
