Addiction is a chronic disease, changing how your brain and body function. As you begin recovery from your substance abuse, you notice that your addiction changed your body. You lost muscle tone and strength, while also losing daily structure, healthy stress relief, self-confidence, and a positive outlook. At Bayview Recovery, we provide all of our inpatient clients with a gym membership. Through recreational and gym therapy, you regain all of the things you lost and start looking and feeling great in the process.

How Does Gym Therapy Help People in Recovery?

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the individual journey to long term recovery is unique and includes many approaches for safe treatment and rehabilitation. But there are several things you need throughout your recovery journey that gym therapy can provide. These include:

• Physical strength
• Self-confidence
• Balanced brain chemistry
• Distraction from cravings
• Improved sleep quality
• Digestive support
• Building optimism for your future

At the same time, gym therapy and exercise helps reduce your risk of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. It also improves your mood and helps you build pride in how you look.

Your therapy in the gym, often also called fitness therapy, can include a variety of approaches. Options include a rehab gym membership or a structured yoga therapy program.

Most people go into gym therapy reluctantly. But after the first few sessions, they start looking forward to the time spent focusing on their physical wellness. Benefits last well beyond the minutes or hours in the gym. Soon, people feel driven to work out and continue this routine after treatment.

Social and Psychological Benefits of Fitness Therapy

When you pursue physical fitness as part of treatment and recovery, you open your world to new people and experiences. In fact, gym therapy is an opportunity to build a new social circle, one filled with healthy-minded people, including many in recovery. This exposure helps you stop focusing on drugs or alcohol and start focusing on better lifestyle choices.

In addition, working out relieves stress. It also reduces unhealthy cravings. When you develop a routine of going to the gym or pursuing other physical activities for fitness, you build respect for your own body. This empowers you to stay clean, healthy, fit, and socially active in positive ways. It helps you think things through more deeply, before falling to your triggers, temptations, or cravings.

Studies Prove Gym Therapy Works

Studies prove all of the above-listed benefits of a rehab gym membership or other fitness therapy. In fact, a 2014 study published in the Scandinavian Journal of Public Health showed that people completing a rehab program with fitness therapy enjoyed an improved quality of life.

Another study published in 2018 showed that people recovering from alcohol use disorder in rehab with a twice-weekly running program reduced their drinking by 81 percent in a month. People recovering from marijuana abuse experienced the same type of benefits. In only two weeks and ten sessions on a treadmill for 30 minutes per session, they reduced their marijuana intake by 50%.

Studies like these show that gym therapy provides benefits for your recovery. Beyond improving your brain and physical function in rehab, fitness therapy inspires you to live a healthier life.

Fitness Therapy in Tacoma, WA

Fitness therapy is an essential part of your rehab treatment, but it is not the only therapy you need. Instead, you need to find a rehab center that provides a variety of treatment methods. These important methods include:

• Extended care and aftercare options
• Dual diagnosis treatment
• Individual, group and family therapy
• Behavioral therapies and trauma therapy
• Evening IOP

Bayview Recovery in Tacoma, WA, provides all of these programs and therapies, along with gym therapy. Start feeling and looking stronger each day on your road to a better life. Call Bayview Recovery now at 855.478.3650 to learn more about fitness in recovery and how you can come out of rehab looking and feeling your best.