Lecture 6 Flashcards
Define physical activity
Define exercise
Define physical fitness
Bodily movement produced by the contraction of skeletal muscles which significantly increases energy expenditure.
Planned, structured and repetitive bodily movement with the aim of improving aspects of physical fitness.
Physical fitness is a multidimensional concept; it’s a set of attributes that relate to performing physical activity, they must be skill related, health related and physiologically related. In brief, the ability to carry out tasks without fatigue.
What are the three types of exercise?
Cardiovascular, e.g. aerobic exercise
Resistance, e.g. anaerobic (weight training)
Flexibility, e.g. improving range of motion
What did Cromby find out about the effects of people’s weight?
How we perceive or body weight has a strong impact on our moral standards, attractiveness, intelligence and sense of control.
How much exercise does the department of health recommend you get?
Adults should exercise for 30 minutes at a moderate intensity at least 5 days a week. Children, however, should do at least 60 minutes to help improve their bone and muscle strength.
It’s also important to consider whether Maslow’s hierarchy of needs are being met.
What are the physical benefits of exercise?
It influences mortality and chronic illnesses.
It reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity and breast cancer.
It reduces the risk of coronary heart disease and is effective in the treatment of chronic fatigue.
It also speeds up metabolism.
Resistance training increases muscle strength, coordination and balance which can reduce the risk of falls in the elderly.
What are the psychological benefits of exercise?
Exercise has been found to improve mood (release of opiates), reduce anxiety (however, anxiety can also be a barrier), improve psychological well-being, act as a painkiller, counters a stress response, relaxes muscles and can help with cognitive decline, e.g. dementia.
Discuss the factors that predict how much one will exercise
Whether there are any social benefits, the mood you’re in (also known as affect), the personal costs/benefits of exercising, your self efficacy, whether you have planned it, your past experiences of exercise and your demographic background.
Why don’t people stick with exercise?
There has been found to be a negative relationship between exercise intensity and adherence, perhaps because repeated exercise makes it harder to release endorphins. If exercise intensity is too high then you can get hyper-arousal which is similar to a stress response (distress). Everyone has a Window of Tolerance and you should stick to this optimal level of arousal.
What are the mental health risks associated with exercise?
Some people can become addicted and dependent on exercise, resulting in exercise becoming a form of self harm. Strict weight control behaviours can result in anorexia which is the leading cause of death in mental illnesses. The term obesity has extremely negative connotations; a threat to health and life. People with pre-existing heart disease are more likely to suffer from a heart attack when exercising acutely and vigorously.
Relate exercising to 5 health behaviour models
Stages of change model (transtheoretical): Pre-contemplation; not thinking you need to exercise, Contemplation; thinking you should change your exercising behaviour, Preparation; planning how to change your exercising behaviour, Action; actually changing your exercising behaviour, Maintenance; sticking to this change, Termination; the behaviour change has now become a part of daily life. If the maintenance stage fails then you go through a lapse and jump back to contemplation.
Health belief model: This measures the likelihood of one engaging in exercise; it believes the likelihood is dependent on the person’s self efficacy and demographics like age, class, beliefs arising from internal/external cues to action. Internal could be unhealthy symptoms like high blood pressure and external could be like seeing a health campaign about exercising. These beliefs formulate our perception to threat which in turn motivates us to change.
Theory of reasoned action: We rationally weigh out our outcome expectations of exercising before acting in a goal-directed manner and changing our behaviour. Our outcome expectations are formulated by intentions; outcome expectancy beliefs, outcome value and subjective norms (e.g. social pressure).
Theory of planned behaviour: This is an extension of the model described above except it also includes perceived behavioural control which combines with the others to form intention. This relies on self efficacy and understands that our behaviour can be irrational due to perceived behavioural control (thinking you don’t have control over your internal health, e.g. blood pressure and therefore not exercising as you don’t think it will help).
Decisional balance: If change has more advantages than disadvantages and more advantages than not changing, then you’re likely to change your behaviour.
It’s also important to consider people’s level of interest which isn’t included in these models, for example, they might want to change but they just don’t care enough.
How can you improve exercise behaviour?
Social and political factors; Rethinking town planning like adding more cycle lanes, charging more for car use, reduce the amount of lifts etc.
Have an exercise prescription
Use stairs instead of lifts/escalators
Have social support like a buddy system
Self monitor yourself with heart rate monitors
Have school based interventions
Have mass media campaigns
Discuss O’brien’s study
They asked woman over the age of 70 their beliefs about exercise using the HBM as a basis. They asked about cardiovascular, resistance and flexibility exercises. They found that the women’s perceived risks were much greater than the benefits as they thought that their body couldn’t handle exercise and they felt physically vulnerable. Their perception to threat was against exercising. They blamed medical reasons which were somewhat irrational as the exercise can be moderate.
Discuss Marcus’ study
They handed out a questionnaire about behavioural change towards exercise and related it to the stages of change model. They found that participant in the pre-contemplation stage had little confidence in their ability to exercise, aka low self efficacy compared to the participants in the maintenance stage that already exercise. This supports the idea that you believe behaviour change is more costly at the earlier stages but you focus on the benefits in the later stages.
Discuss Dzewaltowski’s study
They recorded the exercise of students over several weeks and found that the theory of planned behaviour fit the results. This was shown because exercise behaviour correlated with the individual’s intentions to exercise, their attitude towards exercise and their perceived behavioural control.
Discuss DiLorenzo’s study
They completed a longitudinal study to look for the effects of exercise on psychological well-being. They found that exercise resulted in psychological benefits, not only short term but long term also. At a 1 year follow up, they still remained significantly improved from the baseline even if their amounts of exercise had reduced.
