In this guide
- Why men hide stress behind other words
- What stress actually does in the body
- Stress, sleep, training and sex
- Tool 1: breathing, the fastest off switch
- Tool 2: meditation, without the incense
- Tool 3: exercise as medicine
- Tool 4: the boring basics that protect you
- What does not work
- When to get help
- My take
Men are not great at saying “I am stressed”. We say we are busy. We say we are tired. We say we are “fine” while sleeping badly, snapping at people and losing interest in sex. It is a familiar picture: the body is ready, the head is somewhere else.
My work has long days, travel, pressure to perform on cue and a lot of attention from strangers. Before that, there was boxing, where nerves before a fight are part of the sport. I have read a lot about how to handle that pressure, and the research turned out to be more practical than I expected.
I am not a doctor or a psychologist, and this is not medical advice. If stress is affecting your daily life, talk to a GP or a mental health professional. The facts below come from the NHS, the Mayo Clinic and peer-reviewed studies on PubMed. The opinions are mine.
Why men hide stress behind other words
The NHS describes many signs of stress that men rarely connect to it: being irritable and snappy, sleeping too much or too little, headaches, muscle tension, stomach problems, sexual problems, and drinking or smoking more (NHS: stress).
Most of us were raised to push through. That works for a hard week. It does not work for a hard year. The first step is not a technique. It is noticing the pattern and calling it what it is.
If you are always tired, always short-tempered and never in the mood, stress is a suspect, not a weakness.
What stress actually does in the body
The Mayo Clinic explains the basic mechanism clearly. When your brain senses a threat, your adrenal glands release adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline raises your heart rate and blood pressure. Cortisol increases blood sugar and slows down functions that are not needed in a fight-or-flight situation, including digestion, growth processes and the reproductive system (Mayo Clinic: chronic stress).
That system is brilliant for a short emergency. The problem is when it never switches off. The Mayo Clinic lists the possible effects of chronic stress: anxiety, depression, problems with memory and focus, digestive issues, muscle tension and pain, headaches, sleep problems, weight gain, lower sexual interest, and over time a higher risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and stroke.
Your body does not care whether the threat is a lion, an angry boss or a phone full of notifications. The alarm is the same.
Stress, sleep, training and sex
These four things are connected, and stress sits in the middle.
Sleep. Racing thoughts keep you awake, and short sleep makes you more stressed the next day. It is a loop. I explained the sleep side in how much sleep do men need.
Training. Hard training is also a stressor. When life stress is high, the same programme that felt great a month ago can leave you exhausted. That is when you need more recovery, not more intensity. My guide on rest days and overtraining explains the warning signs.
Sex. Because the stress response pushes the body away from reproduction and towards survival, chronic stress is one of the most common reasons men lose desire or struggle with erections. I wrote about this in low libido in men and sexual performance anxiety. For many men, the fix starts outside the bedroom.
Tool 1: breathing, the fastest off switch
Breathing is the only part of the stress response you can control directly, in seconds, anywhere.
The NHS offers a simple breathing exercise for stress: sit or lie comfortably, breathe in gently through your nose, letting your breath flow deep into your belly, and out through your mouth, counting steadily from one to five on each breath if it helps. Repeat for at least five minutes (NHS: breathing exercises for stress).
There is also good research behind exhale-focused breathing. A 2023 randomised controlled study from Stanford, published in Cell Reports Medicine, compared three daily five-minute breathing practices with five minutes of mindfulness meditation over one month. The exercise called cyclic sighing, which emphasises long, slow exhales, produced greater improvement in mood and a larger reduction in breathing rate than meditation (Balban et al., PubMed).
Cyclic sighing is simple:
- Breathe in through your nose until your lungs feel full.
- Take a second, shorter sniff in to top up.
- Breathe out slowly and fully through your mouth, longer than the inhale.
- Repeat for five minutes.
I like this tool because it does not require belief. You do not need to “clear your mind”. You just breathe slower on the way out. It works before a meeting, before a set, before a scene, or in bed when your head will not shut up.
Tool 2: meditation, without the incense
Meditation has a marketing problem for men. It sounds soft, spiritual or expensive. The research is more sober.
A 2014 meta-analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine reviewed 47 randomised trials with more than 3,500 participants. Mindfulness meditation programmes showed moderate evidence of improving anxiety, depression and pain, and low evidence of improving stress and mental health-related quality of life. The authors found no evidence that meditation was better than other active treatments like exercise or therapy (Goyal et al., PubMed).
So meditation is not magic, but it is a legitimate tool with effects similar to other good options. If it works for you, keep it. If it does not, the breathing above and the exercise below are just as valid. The Mayo Clinic lists meditation, yoga, deep breathing and massage together as relaxation options for a reason.
Tool 3: exercise as medicine
This is the one I trust most, because it also builds a better body.
A large 2024 network meta-analysis in the BMJ looked at 218 randomised trials with more than 14,000 participants with depression. Compared with active controls, walking or jogging, yoga, strength training and mixed aerobic exercise all produced moderate reductions in symptoms. Higher intensity tended to produce bigger effects, and strength training and yoga were among the best tolerated (Noetel et al., PubMed).
Depression and everyday stress are not the same thing, but the overlap is real, and many people find training is where their head gets quiet. Boxing is a good example: for three minutes a round, there is no room to think about anything else.
You do not need a perfect programme. A brisk walk counts. If you want structure, start with my strength training plan for beginners or the boxing-style workout. Just be careful not to use punishing workouts as another way to stress your body when you are already exhausted.
Tool 4: the boring basics that protect you
The Mayo Clinic’s stress management advice starts with the basics: eat a healthy diet, get regular exercise and plenty of sleep. It also recommends turning off screens at least an hour before bed, keeping a journal, making time for hobbies, staying connected with friends and family, and organising your tasks so you remove what is not needed (Mayo Clinic: chronic stress).
None of that is exciting. All of it works better than people expect. My practical version:
- Protect sleep first. Same wake-up time, coffee early, phone away from the bed.
- Move every day. Even on rest days, a walk outside.
- Write it down. Five minutes of listing what is worrying you and what you can actually do about it.
- Cut one source of noise. News alerts, a group chat, a habit of checking work email at night.
- Talk to someone. A friend, a partner, a coach. Men isolate under stress, and isolation makes it worse.
I also wrote about building habits that last when motivation disappears in discipline vs motivation. Stress management is a habit like any other.
What does not work
The Mayo Clinic warns against coping strategies that harm your health: alcohol, tobacco, drugs or overeating. They feel like relief for an hour and make stress worse over weeks. Alcohol especially wrecks sleep quality, and nicotine affects blood flow, including the blood flow that matters for erections. See alcohol and sexual performance and smoking, vaping and erections.
Doom-scrolling is the modern version. It feels like rest. It is not.
When to get help
Self-help has limits. The NHS says to see a GP if you are struggling to cope with stress or if the things you are trying are not helping, and notes that in some areas you can refer yourself directly to talking therapies (NHS: stress).
Get urgent help if you have thoughts of harming yourself. And the Mayo Clinic is clear that chest pain with shortness of breath, sweating or pain in the arm or jaw can be a heart attack, not “just stress”. Call emergency services.
People in high-pressure, public jobs, including the adult industry, face particular mental health pressures. I covered that side in porn performers and mental health.
My take
Stress is not a sign of weakness. It is a biological system doing its job for too long. You cannot remove every stressor from your life, but you can teach your body to switch the alarm off more often.
If you want a simple start: five minutes of slow, long-exhale breathing every day, a walk or a workout, and a phone that leaves the bedroom at night. Do that for a month and pay attention to your sleep, your temper and your sex drive. The changes are often bigger than men expect.
If you want the human stories of the women of this industry, read my columns on House of Maximo. Follow my work at maximogarciaworld.com, and for the 18+ side, fuckingpornstars.net.
Sources
- Mayo Clinic. Chronic stress puts your health at risk.
- NHS. Stress.
- NHS. Breathing exercises for stress.
- Balban MY et al. Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine, 2023.
- Goyal M et al. Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Internal Medicine, 2014.
- Noetel M et al. Effect of exercise for depression: systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BMJ, 2024.
