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Getting Fit: A Minimal Intervention for Aerobic Exercise

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2014

Christina Lee
Christina Lee*
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle
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Abstract

Forty-five university students were assigned on a sequential basis to either a face-to-face or a self-help exercise program for 12 weeks. Pretests and posttests included anthropometric and physiological variables, field tests of aerobic capacity, and psychological variables which had previously been identified as predictors of adherence to exercise. Both groups showed significant increases in aerobic capacity and reported increases in general well-being, suggesting that self-help programs may be as effective as more structured interventions in facilitating exercise. However, self-reports 12 weeks later suggested that maintenance was quite poor for both groups. Measures of body composition showed few changes over 12 weeks. Psychological variables generally failed to predict success with either program. It is suggested that variables derived from narrowly social-cognitive approaches to health-related behaviour change may fail to take account of social and environmental constraints which may be important in understanding and predicting maintenance with health-related exercise.

Type
Research Article
Information
Behaviour Change , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , December 1992 , pp. 223 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 1992

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References

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