The exercise journey, from starting to persisting.
- Xavier Grech - Osteopath at Prom Health
- Aug 26
- 3 min read
It's 5:30am, 2 degrees outside and I’m pouring water over my frosted windscreen once again. I'm heading off to an early exercise session at the gym that we’ve opened in Foster. It’s one of 6 sessions that I’ll partake in for the week. Whilst doing this I stop and think, what drives me and others to start exercise and even more importantly, persist with it over time?
We all know that exercise is a huge contributor to living a longer, healthier life both physically and mentally and there is plenty of evidence to back this. Last month a systematic review was published, having examined 85 studies looking at the impacts from exercising consistently during adulthood with the aim to see if it has a cumulative impact on health outcomes (1). The study found:
Being consistently active had about 30-40% reduction of dying from any cause.
Increasing levels from below the recommended guidelines had a 20-25% reduction.
How much is enough? The World Health Organisation recommends 150-300 minutes of moderate intensity exercise each week or 75-150 minutes of vigorous exercise (2). Whilst daily activities like cleaning and gardening help to keep us active, planned exercise with highly varied movements and equipment that helps to challenge our aerobic capacity, balance, agility, mobility & strength in ways that we wouldn’t otherwise do day to day.
I’ve been chatting to patients every day about the idea of coming to our gym and there are various motivators & barriers to them starting. The answers I’m encountering are similar to what’s been found in research.
For those over 70, the main barriers to starting exercise are concern for their physical health/fitness, lack of motivation, fear of falls & access to facilities (3). The key motivators are support from family & friends, quality social interaction, personal benefits, prioritising ease of access, support from healthcare professionals & reducing fear of falls.
For younger adults (25-54), the most common barriers were lack of time, preferring to do other things and lack of enjoyment, followed by lack of confidence and nobody to exercise with (4). Main motivators for being physically active were to lose weight, avoid/manage health conditions, improve athletic performance, improve appearance & mood.
So let’s suppose that someone is determined enough. They rip of the Band-Aid and start exercising... We all know the odds of dropping off in the first couple of months are high.
Therefore, do the same barriers and motivators correlate with the reasons as to why people stick with exercise once they start? Not necessarily. We may start exercise with certain motivators, but these can and are likely to evolve over time.
A longitudinal study examined people who consistently versus inconsistently exercised at a fitness club (≥2 sessions per week) over a year (5). Both groups were generally motivated by factors such as improving their health and fitness, but only the consistent exercises reported higher levels of enjoyment from actually doing exercise (e.g. “I enjoy the feeling of exerting myself”) and the challenge of exercise (e.g. “I like striving towards my goals”). Maybe we should consider reframing exercise so that we enjoy the experience and the goals that we set ourselves.
Fitness clubs themselves are a factor as well. Different types have different results.
A cross-sectional study compared members from larger multipurpose gyms, low-cost gyms and boutique gyms (6). Members of boutique clubs reported the highest autonomous motivation, perceived greater social support from family/friends, were younger and exercised more compared to multipurpose and fitness-only clubs. The study concluded that exercise enjoyment and social community are possibly a large part of regular exercise which can be found in boutique gyms.
Prom Health Gym comes under the category of a boutique gym, being smaller and specialised to classes-only. Yes, our prices are higher than a low-cost 24-hour gym, but we employ highly skilled staff to run the classes, the classes are smaller & personalised, so you get plenty of support and we make an effort to ensure that everyone feels included.
Being rural, we are trying to target a broad age & fitness range, from teenagers to seniors, so please don’t rule us out as a young persons or old person’s gym. Call us for suggestions and queries. We are open to adapting to your needs & will be increasing the range of classes in the future. We truly want the area to see exercise as a part of life and are working hard to help people navigate their way through starting and persisting with being active.
What has been apparent to me from my brief research session is: once that Band-Aid is ripped off and the exercise journey begins, focus on how it makes you feel, set some challenges and enjoy the social aspect of exercising with others.
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