Before even beginning their workout, nearly every participant in Sylvia Borowska’s recent Liftonic class was crying. The instructor asked each of the 30 participants to grab the heaviest weight they could pick up. Pretend it’s on your shoulders or on your back or in your chest, Borowska told them.

“Do as many deadlifts as you can for the amount of time that the person you’ve lost has passed,” Borowska said she told the class. “That can represent either the months or years you’ve been grieving.”

Borowska partnered with Grief, Sweat & Tears to offer that class catering to grieving New Yorkers. Founded in December 2025, GST is an initiative that hosts pop-up workout classes across the city each month. It’s “where grief meets fitness,” read the Instagram post announcing the $30 class.

Borowska has taught Liftonic weight-training classes for five years, but her pop-up grief class was the first time she opened a session by sharing how she lost her mother to lung disease.

“Let’s keep going,” Borowska urged on the night of the class. “Grief is heavy, but we’re stronger than that, so let’s prove to ourselves and each other how strong we are.”

A workout class mixing sweat and tears isn’t a rare event. Rage cycling sessions, anxiety yoga and dozens of similar fitness initiatives have gained traction in recent years, inviting people to choose workout classes based on experiences and emotions.

Do these classes actually help people process grief, rage and heartbreak? Ryan Martin, a psychologist and author, said there isn’t much research yet available on the topic.

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Exercise isn’t the one-size-fits-all solution

Participants often describe “releasing” negative emotions during a workout class, but Martin, the Wisconsin-based psychologist, cautions against saying this. The emotion isn’t going anywhere.

“It keeps the heart elevated at a time when the goal is typically to decrease the heart rate,” he explained, referring to the physical activity. “It keeps your muscles tense at a time when the goal is often to decrease that muscle tension.”

While the concept of choosing to box or run when you’re on the brink of an emotional breakdown might seem like a positive outlet, it isn’t for everyone, according to Martin.

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Those considering emotion-centered workout classes should ensure they are able to opt out of a workout whenever they need to, said Dr. Ethan Kross, professor of psychology and management at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He said he encourages people to “self-experiment.”

How to deal with emotions

What’s Martin’s biggest piece of advice? Don’t just rely on workout classes to process adverse emotions. If you’re dealing with profound trauma or grief, work with therapists or in group therapy, he said.

There are other ways to process negative emotions, Martin said. In addition to therapy and exercise, he recommends speaking to your doctor about medication, spending time in nature and reading books about grief.

Kross said he advises participants to first recognize there are multiple tools to deal with their experiences. If you’re someone who engages in negative self-talk, think about how you’d talk to a friend in the same situation, he said.

He also suggests “adopting a more detached perspective on what’s happening, becoming an observer, a fly on the wall, thinking about what’s happening to you from a distance.”

Kross said the community component of a workout class is “just the tip of the iceberg.” These classes could do more to help people process their emotions, but there isn’t much science informing the class workout structure, he said. For instance, venting anger might seem like a good idea, but it could sustain it, a 2024 study by The Ohio State University found.

In Borowska’s Liftonic class though, it’s a Friday night — and no one is concerned about the science. Participants gathered outside the studio, mixing laughs at weekend plans with the tears of grief and deadlift-induced sweat.

Read the complete article at CNN