Search Weight Loss Topics:




Mar 15

Want to exercise more? Get yourself some competition – Knowridge Science Report

Exercise Programs Comments Off on Want to exercise more? Get yourself some competition – Knowridge Science Report

Imagine youre a CEO trying to get your employees to exercise.

Most health incentive programs have an array of tools pamphlets, websites, pedometers, coaching, team activities, step challenges, money but what actually motivates people?

Is it social support? Competition? Teamwork? Corporate leaders often try a little bit of everything.

A new study published in the journalPreventative Medicine Reports found these efforts should hone in on one area: Competition.

It was a far stronger motivation for exercise than friendly support, and in fact, giving people such support actually made them less likely to go to the gym less than simply leaving them alone.

Most people think that when it comes to social media more is better, says Damon Centola, an associate professor in Penns Annenberg School and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and senior author on the paper.

This study shows that isnt true: When social media is used the wrong way, adding social support to an online health program can backfire and make people less likely to choose healthy behaviors.

However, when done right, we found that social media can increase peoples fitness dramatically.

For this research, Centola and Jingwen Zhang, Ph.D., lead paper author and recent Annenberg graduate, recruited nearly 800 Penn graduate and professional students to sign up for an 11-week exercise program called PennShape.

After program completion, the students who attended the most exercise classes for activities like running, spinning, yoga, and weight lifting, among others, won prizes.

What the participants didnt know was that the researchers had split them into four groups to test how different kinds of social networks affected their exercise levels.

The four groups were: individual competition, team support, team competition, and a control group.

Overwhelmingly, competition motivated participants to exercise the most, with attendance rates 90% higher in the competitive groups than in the control group.

Both team and individual competition equally drove the students to work out, with participants in the former taking a mean of 38.5 classes a week and those in the latter taking 35.7.

The biggest surprise came in the number of workouts a week by members of the team support group: Just 16.8, on average half the exercise rate of the competitive groups.

Framing the social interaction as a competition can create positive social norms for exercising. Zhang says, now an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis.

Competition triggers a social ratcheting-up process, he adds. In a competitive setting, each persons activity raises the bar for everyone else.

Social support is the opposite: a ratcheting-down can happen. If people stop exercising, it gives permission for others to stop, too, and the whole thing can unravel fairly quickly.

The positive effects of social competition go beyond exercise, to encouraging healthy behaviors such as medication compliance, diabetes control, smoking cessation, flu vaccinations, weight loss, and preventative screening, as well as pro-social behaviors like voting, recycling, and lowering power consumption.

Like Knowridge Science Report onFacebook.

News source:University of Pennsylvania. The content is edited for length and style purposes. Figure legend: This Knowridge.com image is for illustrative purposes only.

Read more from the original source:
Want to exercise more? Get yourself some competition - Knowridge Science Report

Related Posts

    Your Full Name

    Your Email

    Your Phone Number

    Select your age (30+ only)

    Select Your US State

    Program Choice

    Confirm over 30 years old

    Yes

    Confirm that you resident in USA

    Yes

    This is a Serious Inquiry

    Yes

    Message:



    matomo tracker