Exercise Motivation: A Gentle Nudge to Get You to the Gym

 After years of working out I have developed a pretty good quilt system that serves to get me to the gym on a regular basis.  Fitness centers do a thriving business based on our desire to be fit and shapely, but the dropout rate is high and we have trouble following through.  Guilt or no guilt, what is it going to take to keep you motivated?

 

The Wall Street Journal featured a story by Kevin Heliker (May 18, 2010) about the power of a gentle nudge.  The article described a research study that was based on motivating people to go to the gym with a system of telephone reminders.  This sounds like a great idea, but my housekeeping motivators that I get every morning from the “Fly Lady,” have yet to keep me on track. The e-mails keep coming and I keep deleting them but refuse to cancel my subscription because someday I am going to try again.  I think I feel that my house would fall into total disarray without those daily reminders to at least make me feel guilty.   It all has to do with that guilt thing, so I am thinking that reminder calls might not be such a bad idea.

 

The study indicated that a small amount of social support, ranging from friends to encourage each other, meetings with fitness instructors etc. really can make a difference.  Exercise researchers estimate that nearly all sedentary people have resolved and failed to maintain an exercise program.  The study involved either human or computer phone calls at regular intervals to check in with you to see if you are still on track.  It was designed to be encouraging rather than chastising.

 

The study indicates that if you can get the participants through eight weeks of regular exercising your innate guilt monitor will kick in.  You would think this would work with the housekeeping thing, wouldn’t you?  Eight weeks sounds like a long time though, but I live in hope.

 

Social support is important and that is the one thing that is lacking on those solitary trips to the gym.  It is hard enough to self motivate without trying to nag or cajole someone else to join you.  As an adult it is hard to find a friend with the same schedule that you have.  Group activities are the answer I suppose but not quite the same thing.  Swimmers, for example, who join a master’s group, do better than someone who just goes to the pool to swim laps. Still, surveys show that 60% of Americans prefer working out alone, especially people who are middle aged or older.  They don’t like having their exercise schedule hooked in to someone else’s.

 

The telephone study interventions have proved to be quite effective when it comes to increasing the exercise levels of sedentary people. Some gyms have begun to incorporate exercise-adherence plans in their studios to help people solve their own exercise problems.  Some form of accountability seems to be the answer.