Is Kickboxing Good for Depression During Perimenopause?
Perimenopausal depression has a hormonal root, and kickboxing targets that root through exercise-driven neurochemistry. Find out how this high-energy workout can help lift low mood.
Depression That Arrives with Perimenopause
It is not uncommon to feel blindsided by depression in your 40s, particularly if you have no prior history of it. Estrogen has a significant moderating effect on serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. As levels become erratic and decline, mood regulation becomes more effortful. The flatness, loss of pleasure, heavy fatigue, and sense of disconnection that characterise depression are amplified by the hormonal backdrop of perimenopause. This is a medical reality, and it deserves both professional support and active lifestyle strategies.
Why Kickboxing Is More Than Just Exercise
Kickboxing demands full-body commitment. The combination of upper and lower body strikes, cardiovascular intensity, rhythm, and coordination means your brain and body are fully occupied. This matters for depression because the illness thrives in disengagement. Depression pulls you inward and toward stillness. Kickboxing physically counters that pull. It forces engagement, breath, movement, and a relationship with your body that depression can sever. The sheer physical effort also produces a neurotransmitter release, including serotonin and dopamine, that is exactly what depression undermines.
Empowerment as an Antidepressant
One of the underappreciated benefits of kickboxing for depression is the psychological dimension of learning a physical skill that involves power and self-defence capability. Perimenopause can bring a sense of loss of control, physical changes that feel unwelcome, a body that seems unpredictable. Learning to execute a clean roundhouse kick, feeling strong and capable in your own body, directly counters that sense of loss. Competence and progress are powerful antidepressants in their own right.
The Practical Challenge of Starting When Depressed
Depression makes getting started the hardest part. The neurochemical deficit that causes low mood also depletes motivation. Accepting this in advance is helpful. You do not need to feel motivated to act. You need to act first, and motivation tends to follow. Committing to a class in advance, choosing a time when your energy is slightly higher (often mid-morning for many people), and keeping expectations low for the first few sessions are all strategies that reduce the activation cost of getting there.
Combining Kickboxing with Professional Support
Exercise is well-evidenced for mild to moderate depression, but it works best alongside other interventions. If your depression is significant, please speak to your GP. HRT can be highly effective for perimenopausal depression specifically because it addresses the hormonal driver. Talking therapy, particularly CBT, builds the cognitive tools that exercise alone cannot provide. Kickboxing is a powerful addition to this support structure, not a replacement for it.
Measuring Progress Through the Fog
Depression distorts perception of progress, making improvements hard to recognise. Keeping a simple workout log and noting mood or energy levels before and after each session can reveal patterns that are invisible when you're in the thick of it. PeriPlan lets you log workouts and track symptoms over time, so you can look back and see that something is shifting, even when it does not feel that way day to day.
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