A 40-minute high-intensity workout increases cortisol in the blood for over an hour after exercise in healthy adults, but a 5-minute sprint does not, suggesting that how long you exercise matters more than how hard you push for triggering this hormonal response.

When a person engages in aerobic exercise lasting more than 15 minutes, their body shows an increase in cortisol levels, which is a hormone released in response to physical stress.

In healthy adults, doing moderate exercise by itself does not raise cortisol levels much, but when caffeine is consumed before exercise, cortisol levels rise about 40 minutes after the workout in both men and women.

If you're a middle-aged adult who doesn't move much, your stress hormone levels go up more after sitting all day and then doing a 25-minute workout, compared to just sitting or breaking up your sitting time with short walks every half hour.

Lifting heavy weights just a few times doesn’t stress your body as much right after as doing lots of lighter reps.

In sedentary young adult males, performing structured sprint intervals for two months lowers cortisol levels in the blood without changing testosterone levels.