A single mind-body session eases anxiety most

Anxiety is common in adolescents and young adults, and acute exercise — a single bout, rather than a weeks-long programme — is a promising non-pharmacological way to relieve it. But exercise is not one intervention: a yoga session, a run and a weights workout place very different demands on body and mind, and it has been unclear which type works best for anxiety in this age group. This network meta-analysis set out to compare the effectiveness of different acute exercise types head to head, ranking them against each other rather than only against doing nothing.

The researchers searched five databases — PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and PsycINFO — from inception to 1 March 2023, limited to English-language publications. They performed both pairwise and network meta-analyses using random-effects models, which allowed exercise types to be compared even where trials had not tested them directly against each other. The certainty of the evidence was rated using the GRADE framework. In total, 33 studies involving 1121 adolescent and young adult participants were included.

Mind-body exercise ranked as the most effective intervention for reducing anxiety, with a standardised mean difference of -0.36 (95% CI -0.70 to -0.03), rated moderate certainty. Aerobic exercise also produced a significant, though smaller, reduction (SMD -0.16, 95% CI -0.28 to -0.03) — and this carried high-certainty evidence. Not everything worked: resistance exercise (SMD -0.09, 95% CI -0.33 to 0.14) and multicomponent exercise (SMD -0.01, 95% CI -0.59 to 0.57) showed no significant reduction in anxiety. Overall, the effects that did emerge were small to moderate in size.

This analysis adds a ranking to a literature that had mostly established only that exercise can help with anxiety. The pattern — mind-body first, aerobic second, resistance and multicomponent unproven for acute anxiety relief — suggests the calming component of exercise may not be interchangeable across formats, at least for a single session in young people. The comparisons are largely indirect, built through the network rather than head-to-head trials, which is why the authors call for more multi-arm randomised controlled trials to provide direct evidence on relative effectiveness. Whether these acute effects translate into lasting benefit is a separate question this study does not address.

If you are a young adult looking to take the edge off an anxious day, this is a reason to think a single session of mind-body exercise — the category covering practices that pair movement with breath and attention — may deliver more immediate relief than other formats, with a straightforward aerobic session a well-supported alternative. It is equally informative that a lone resistance workout showed no significant acute anxiety effect in these data, which says nothing about lifting's many other benefits. Effect sizes were modest, and exercise is one tool among several for managing anxiety, not a treatment on its own.