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Exercising with peers has added appeal
Newswise — A new study in the
April issue of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine has found if
given a choice of exercising alone, with people younger or older or
with people their same age, most adults would rather exercise with
others in their own age group.
“The study’s findings provide
useful insight into the preferences of older exercisers, which in
turn have important implications for exercise promotion initiatives
[in communities around the world],” said lead researcher Mark
Beauchamp, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the School of Human
Kinetics at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
Beauchamp and colleagues studied
947 adults between the ages of 30 and 91 living in northern England.
The participants were first grouped according to their age bracket
(30s, 40s, 50s and so on) and asked about their level of activity.
They were considered “regularly active” if they exercised for at
least 20 minutes, three times a week, and “underactive” if they did
not.
They then were asked to rate
whether they prefer to exercise alone, with groups of people in
different age brackets, or with those in their same age bracket.
The authors say that previous
research has suggested older adults prefer to exercise alone rather
than in groups. But by taking into account the characteristics of
different exercise groups, Beauchamp and colleagues found that
although older adults may report a lack of appeal for exercising
with those much younger than themselves, they actually exhibit a
positive preference for exercising with those of their own age.
Furthermore, participants did not report a greater preference for
exercising alone.
Because of this, Beauchamp says
it’s vital that government officials take steps to better “promote
opportunities that will encourage healthy and physically active
lifestyles” by increasing the availability of group exercise
opportunities across the life span.
While his experience shows there
is no single type of activity program that will work for all adults,
Wojtek Chodzko-Zajko, Ph.D., head of the department of kinesiology
and community health at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, agreed the study confirms group exercise options
can be “highly motivating.”
He added that to fully maximize
physical activity, there needs to be “a diverse menu of activity
options.”
“These opportunities should
include both traditional exercise programs as well as building more
activity into everyday life through walking, biking and dancing,”
Chodzko-Zajko said.
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