Post exercise mood enhancement.

If exercise looked more appealing would that persuade us (sub consciously) to do it? Volkswagen ran an interesting project called the fun theory. This video shows an installation of Piano stairs. I think due to staircases always being pretty dull to look at this is a great ay of persuading people to do more because it is out of the ordinary.

New Year Motivators

There are a number of things released just now trying to get us off the sofa and into exercise. New Years resolutions and eating too much over the festive have sparked these off (as they do every year) but how long will they run for and how long will people actually stick to them? I'm going to follow the fitness motivators below to get an insight into this, when and why do people lose interest and how sucessful these programmes are.

GMTV's Danicing Diet
http://www.gm.tv/lifestyle/diet/42941-dancing-queen-diet.html

This Morning's Health Kick 2010
http://www.itv.com/lifestyle/thismorning/healthandwellbeing/

I will also follow The Daily Express and The Sun as they are both running New Year fitness guides.


'FITNESS AND EXERCISE ISN'T SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO BE GOOD AT, IT'S JUST SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO DO.' Richard Callendar, fitness coach.

What can affect our commitment to exercise?

Mistakes that contribute to failure to exercise...

•Focusing on the scale. Weight loss isn't going to happen right away. For some folks, it takes months to see significant changes. When starting a program, it's best to set measurable goals like getting a certain number of workouts in each week or lifting a certain amount of weight.

•Working too hard. Newbies sometimes go at their new workout programs like veteran exercisers. Starting easy and working your way up to more frequent exercise makes your workouts more enjoyable and gives your body time to adjust to exercise.

•Not working hard enough. On the other hand, some people don't take their intensity high enough to promote weight loss results. Learn the right way to Monitor Your Intensity

•Comparing yourself to others. If your friend is losing weight faster than you are, it doesn't mean something's wrong with you. We all lose fat at different rates. Try to keep the focus on the gains you're making, not someone else's.

•Giving up too soon. If you're not seeing results yet, giving up is the last thing you should do. If you've been working out consistently, you may be well on your way to weight loss. Whether you've seen results or not, you ARE getting something out of exercising regularly. Think better sleep, more energy, better quality of life...is any of this sinking in.

Taken from www.exercise.about.com

That's the most convincing reason I've found pro-exercise.

The benefits of anti-ageing in relation to exercise may scientifically have links to one another. Although this may convince many to start regular exercise it will not push past the initial period of pain, lack of confidence or even the time when you just can't be bothered.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8385700.stm

Wii vs Life

So the next part of my research was to compare exercise in different environments and how this affects your mood as well as motivation. I chose to do a case study on comparing exercise on the 'Wii' to doing the same activity in real life.
I believe the wii is good at getting people involved in exercise but I also think my video shows that most people are much happier doing the activity in real life. The difference in effort required also comes across strongly in the video in addition to how competition can affect the amount of effort you put in.
I'm going to stop blabbing now because the video speaks for itself!

Emotion Graphs.

Moving on from the fitness diaries I wanted to find out more about peoples moods during exercise so I had 15 individuals complete the following two line graphs.

The first was completed from the time of one hour prior to exercise, during exercise and then ending on post exercise. And the second was completed in relation to moods if you don't exercise at the time you would normally.

4 samples featured above.

My findings show that after doing exercise peoples moods were happier and if they didn't do exercise their moods were much unhappier. This backed up how I evaluated the fitness diaries.

7 Day Fitness Diary

My research began with a 7 day fitness diary. I handed out the booklets to 8 individuals to try and find out about their exercising habits and if there is anything that strongly affects when and how they exercise. I wasn't too sure what I'd get back from this however the results have pushed my project in the direction of looking into how emotion can determine how, when, where and why people exercise. The diaries pushed me in this direction because of two findings. The first finding was from one of the first questions,it asked to pick a colour to describe their mood for the day and this showed that on days when people picked darker and duller colours they tend to exercise less (if at all) and days when they picked brighter colours they did much more exercise and were motivated to do more. The second finding backs up the first and this was from asking each person to draw something they'd doone that day, something that made them laugh, draw a picture of them exercising etc. (One drawing per day) These are featured above.