How does exercise impact mental health?

Exercise can have a very positive effect on one's mental health and can help to reduce the likelihood or symptoms of depression. It is important, however, that athletes also develop other coping skills in their toolkit in case they are unable to exercise due to injury or lack of access.
 
Transcript: "Exercise can have a very positive effect on one's mental health. I know there's been research to show that 120 minutes per week of moderately intense exercise can reduce the likelihood or the symptoms of depression. So there's clearly some benefits here. Now one thing I will say is for athletes, usually one of the main coping strategies for dealing with anxiety or stress or low mood is exercise. And the one caution that I would offer is that if an athlete is for some reason not able to exercise due to not having access or perhaps due to injury, it's important to have other positive coping skills in one's toolkit. So working with a sports psychologist you can help develop other coping skills outside of exercise. But to summarize, exercise is an effective coping skill for bettering one's mental health."