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What’s in a name? Group fitness class names and women’s reasons for exercising

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Abstract

The benefits of intrinsic exercise motivation are well recognized, yet extrinsically focused group-fitness class names/descriptions dominate the fitness industry. To explore the impact of how fitness classes are marketed, women (N = 389) were asked to indicate their preference for either intrinsically or extrinsically focused fitness classes based on title/description. Participants who favored intrinsic class names/descriptions were more likely to report greater interest/enjoyment, perceived competence, and greater effort and report exercising for health/fitness-related reasons. Those favoring extrinsic class names/descriptions were more likely to experience tension/pressure when exercising and report exercising for appearance/weight-related reasons. The results demonstrate the importance of wording when marketing fitness classes.

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... The names and descriptions of group fitness classes contribute to how they are perceived (Brown et al., 2017). Both class names and class descriptions that relate to intrinsic motivation encourage participants' interests, enjoyment, and perceived confidence. ...
... Both class names and class descriptions that relate to intrinsic motivation encourage participants' interests, enjoyment, and perceived confidence. While names that are based on extrinsic motivation and connected to appearance or weight-related terminology elucidate more tension in participants and pressure to exercise (Brown et al., 2017). Based on these findings, club owners and operators would do well to re-evaluate class titles and descriptions. ...
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This article examines the situation of group fitness instructors with particular attention to the implications of the influence of fitness culture on body-related norms which shape instructors’ self-perceived conceptions of body image. Of particular interest is the consideration of how self-perception influences an instructor’s performance, and their ability to educate and motivate their class participants. Evidence will show that the most popular ways that body image is incorporated into and represented within the group fitness setting are limiting and misguided, and there are better methods for instruction that fitness professionals and the industry can follow. Recommendations for practice and suggestions for interventions to encourage adequate body satisfaction in the group fitness instructor’s context will be provided for both individual and collective levels of action. This will include what instructors can do at an individual level to improve their self-perceptions and professional practice and support themselves and their peers; what can be done in gyms and fitness facilities to improve community support for instructors; and what can be done at the fitness industry level to encourage a cultural shift in body-related norms and expectations.
... For decades, the marketing and promotion of fitness centers, and the services within the centers in particular, has been centered on objectivization of the body (13,14). Specifically, for women this may have contributed to underline the sex role that society traditionally has prescribed for women (i.e., as a sexual object), which may facilitate lower threshold toward sexually related verbal, behavioral, or physical acts (12). ...
... Nevertheless, there is scarce knowledge on the extent of SH in the fitness industry. We recently reported that a high frequency of fitness instructors experienced body appearance pressure (15), which points to a serious consequence of working within an industry where body appearance has been idealized for decades (13,16). Working on profit-based contracts, relying on a "bodily capital" (i.e., relying on body appearance to win customers, as this may promote credibility on health and exercise knowledge) (14), may increase the risk for experiences of SH. ...
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Introduction: This paper explores frequency of experiences of sexual harassment (SH) among fitness instructors, outlines the typical perpetrator, and explores associated mental health symptoms. Design: Cross-sectional survey. Materials and Methods: A total of 270 Norwegian fitness instructors, recruited in social media, responded to an electronic questionnaire in 2019/2020 on experiences of body appearance pressure, SH, and mental health symptoms. Outcomes included in this publication are experiences of SH, and symptoms of mental health issues based on the Hopkins symptom checklist, SCL-10; Beck Depression Inventory, BDI-1a; and Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire, EDE-q. Results: The frequencies of SH experiences were 30% among 211 women and 22% among 59 men, respectively, with customers being the most frequent source of such approaches and personal trainers (PTs) more often reporting such experiences compared to group instructors (GIs) and to those operating as both PT and GI. Women having experienced SH had significantly higher scores in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and eating disorders compared to women with no such experience. Conclusion: The high frequency of SH experiences among fitness instructors, with customers emerging as perpetrators and typically in the context of personal training, necessitates increased awareness of SH in the fitness industry. To reduce the occurrence of SH, the fitness centers need to communicate countermeasures with high level of compliance.
... A challenge with such recruitment is that non-members perceive that there is a high focus on body appearance among members of fitness centers, and as such, this prevents them from involving with this industry (Credicare, 2016). Such perceptions may be derived from the appearancefocused communication operated by the fitness industry in their marketing strategies, and by the exercise concepts consecutively introduced in the last decade (e.g., bootylicious, body pump, booty builder, 500 kcal) (Brown et al., 2017). Other than the limitation such reputation may bring for the fitness industry upon the potential to recruit new members, this also brings concern to the health of fitness instructors [i.e., group instructors (GIs) and personal trainers (PTs)] working in such environment on a daily basis. ...
... Generally, when physical activity is driven by external motivation (i.e., motivation comes from outside the individual and is performed to gain a reward, e.g., admiration and popularity), and specifically when motivated by a drive for extreme body figures, it associates to less healthy, and potentially harmful, effects (Thogersen-Ntoumani and Ntoumanis, 2007;Brown et al., 2017). Within the fitness industry, idealization of extreme body figures may typically turn into a desire to attain a thin body figure (Olson et al., 1996), a muscular body figure (i.e., a desire to attain an athletic body figure characterized by large muscle mass) (McCreary and Sasse, 2000), or a lean body ideal (i.e., desire to achieve a toned, athletic body with a low level of body fat) (Smolak and Murnen, 2008). ...
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... Propone que las personas implementarán el cambio cuando se sientan, a) competentes, lo que significa dominar tareas o habilidades, b) un sentido de pertenencia con otras personas, lo que se conoce como relación y, c) un sentido de autonomía, que es sentir una sensación de control sobre sus acciones y metas [72]. ...
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... This furthers our argument by inferring that message framing does indeed make a difference in young adult female intention to attend a GBE class. This finding is also supported by research that found messaging Table 4 Advertising framing effect on intention scores 1, Significantly different (p < .05) between communal and agentic; 2. Significantly different (p < .05) between communal and appearance; 3. Significantly different (p < .05) between communal and wellbeing; 4. significantly different (p < .05) between agentic and appearance; 5 Significantly different (p < .05) between agentic and well-being; 6. Significantly different (p < .05) between appearance and well-being; * The values are reported in mean ± SE (Brown et al., 2017). The significant difference in intention scores among participants that reported different EI scores shows that how a female identifies with exercise impacts her intention to engage in movement behaviors. ...
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The overall health benefits of physical activity are well known, yet females are less physically active than men overall. To examine how to increase female physical activity levels, the effect of four advertisement frames (communal, agentic, appearance, and well-being) on young adult females' intention to attend group exercise classes were investigated. 177 undergraduate females reported their level of intention to attend group exercise for each of the differently framed advertisements. A linear mixed model with random effect for subject analysis found a well-being frame generated significantly more positive intention scores while an appearance frame resulted in significantly more negative intention scores to engage in group exercise. The results indicate the importance of using well-being frames and avoiding appearance-based frames in communication designed to increase young adult female intention to engage in physical activity.
... In India, the utilisation of such an approach can be easily observed. Its popularisation has resulted from the so-called 'modernisation' of yoga, reflected by disregarding the fact that the activity is a derivative of the Buddhist religion, where health and fitness, although valued, are not the main focus of the practice (Larson, 2008;Worthington, 1982), and interpreting it as a purely physical exercise (Brown et al., 2017). Arguably, this strategy is designed to respond to a Western market consisting of people who are conscious about their physical health and attractiveness of their body, but not necessarily interested in any mental or spiritual self-development. ...
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Thisstudy aimed to investigate the role of social comparison processes in women's responses to images of thin-idealize d female beauty. A sample of 126 women viewed magazine advertisements containing full-body, body part, or product im- ages. Instructional set was also manipulated with three levels: control, appearance focus, and social comparison. Mood and body dissatisfaction were measured im- mediately before and after advertisement viewing, while state weight anxiety and the amount of appearance comparison engaged in were measured only after the advertisements. It was found that exposure to either body part or full body images led to increased negative mood and body dissatisfaction, while the amount of com- parison processing was affected by both image type and instructional set. Impor- tantly, regression analyses showed that the effects of image type on mood and body dissatisfaction were mediated by the amount of social comparison reported. It was concluded that the processing in which women engage in response to media images is an important contributor to negative effects. Sociocultural theory provides the most strongly supported theoretical account of the high levels of body image disturbance, body dissatisfac- tion, and disordered eating experienced by many women in Western so- cieties (Thompson, Heinberg, Altabe, & Tantleff-Dunn, 1999). This model maintains that current societal standards for beauty inordinately emphasize the desirability of thinness, and thinness at a level impossible for many women to achieve by healthy means. In fact, the gap between the average woman's body size and the ideal is now larger than ever be-
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Objective: The study aimed to investigate different types of exercise, the role of exercise motivation and body image outcomes within the fitness centre environment. Design and method: Participants were 571 female fitness class participants recruited from fitness centres. They ranged in age from 18 to 71 years and participated in a variety of fitness activities both within and outside of the fitness centre environment. Reasons for exercise, self-objectification, body esteem, and disordered eating symptomatology were assessed using questionnaire measures. Results: Time spent exercising within the fitness centre environment was more highly related to body image and eating disturbance than time spent exercising outside of the fitness centre environment. Participation in cardio-based workouts (e.g., cardiovascular machines) was positively related to self-objectification, disordered eating behaviour, and appearance-related reasons for exercise, and negatively related to body esteem. In contrast, participation in yoga-based fitness classes was related to lower self-objectification and exercising more for health and fitness. Appearance-focused reasons for exercise were found to mediate the relationship between exercise types and self-objectification, disordered eating, and body esteem. Conclusion: The results show that the reasons women have for doing exercise provide a mechanism through which different types of exercise are associated with negative body image outcomes. Thus, despite the physical health-related benefits associated with regular physical activity, exercise motivated by appearance reasons (e.g., weight control) can lead to poorer body image in some women.
Article
Study 1 tested whether yoga practice is associated with greater awareness of and responsiveness to bodily sensations, lower self-objectification, greater body satisfaction, and fewer disordered eating attitudes. Three samples of women (43 yoga, 45 aerobic, and 51 nonyoga/nonaerobic practitioners) completed questionnaire measures. As predicted, yoga practitioners reported more favorably on all measures. Body responsiveness, and, to some extent, body awareness significantly explained group differences in self-objectification, body satisfaction, and disordered eating attitudes. The mediating role of body awareness, in addition to body responsiveness, between self-objectification and disordered eating attitudes was also tested as proposed in objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Body responsiveness, but not awareness, mediated the relationship between self-objectification and disordered eating attitudes. This finding was replicated in Study 2 in a sample of female undergraduate students. It is concluded that body responsiveness and, to some extent, body awareness are related to self-objectification and its consequences.
Article
This study was designed to investigate self-objectification, its theoretical consequences, and its relationship to reasons for exercise within a fitness center environment. Sixty female aerobic instructors and 97 female aerobic participants, who ranged in age from 18 to 45 years, completed questionnaire measures of self-objectification, reasons for exercise, body dissatisfaction, and disordered eating. Increased self-objectification (and self-surveillance) was related to disordered eating symptomatology, body dissatisfaction, and appearance-related reasons for exercise. Aerobic instructors scored significantly lower on self-objectification, body dissatisfaction, and disordered eating than did aerobic participants, and they exercised more for enjoyment and less for appearance-related reasons. For aerobic participants, location of exercise (inside or outside the fitness center) moderated the relationship between frequency of exercise and self-objectification, such that exercising within fitness centers was associated with relatively higher self-objectification. Higher levels of self-objectification were also related to wearing tighter exercise clothing. These results support the general model of Objectification Theory, and provide practical implications for women who exercise within objectifying environments.
Article
The study investigated the relationship between amount of exercise and psychological well-being in a broadly based sample. A questionnaire assessing amount of exercise, reasons for exercise, body satisfaction, and self-esteem was completed by 252 participants between the ages of 16 and 60 years. Almost all participants (>95%) were White. Participants were divided into four groups on the basis of gender and age, resulting in 70 young women, 48 young men, 73 mature women, and 61 mature men. Significant negative relationships between amount of exercise and body satisfaction and self-esteem were found for young women, and positive relationships for the remainder of the sample. Women exercised more for reasons of weight control, tone, and mood enhancement than men. For the whole sample, the first two of these reasons were associated with lower body satisfaction, while exercising for health and fitness reasons was associated with increased self-esteem. It was concluded that reasons for exercising did not provide an adequate explanation for the obtained difference in correlations across gender and age.
Article
The present research had two goals: (1) to document how health advice is framed on the covers of women’s health magazines, and (2) to investigate whether exposure to appearance frames (i.e., do something in order to look better) affected women’s body-related self-perceptions compared to health frames (i.e., to do something in order to feel better). Study 1, a content analysis of 426 cover headlines on the five highest-circulating women’s health magazines in the United States, revealed that appearance frames were just as prevalent as health frames. Study 2, an experiment conducted on 103 U.S. undergraduate women, showed that those assigned to appearance frames reported more body shame and appearance-related motivation to exercise than women assigned to health frames. KeywordsFraming-Health magazines-Health advice-Self-objectification-Body shame
Article
The first objective of this study is to investigate whether consumers' advertisement preference is influenced by their degree of participation in, as well as their attitudes towards, sport. The relationships among preferences for advertisements and products and consumers' desire to purchase are also explored. Secondly, the study seeks to determine the role of product involvement in favouring particular advertisement types and increasing purchase intention. Thirdly, the practical implications for the use of athletes as models in advertisements in order to increase the effectiveness of sports advertisements are addressed. A survey was conducted of 200 college students from three universities in Seoul and Kyonggi-do. Pre-testing was used to validate the survey instrument and then experimental stimuli were prepared and tested against subjects. Sports participation, sports preference and lifestyle were found to affect advertisement preference. People with active lifestyles were more interested in sports advertisements than people with non-active lifestyles. Secondly, advertisement preference was found to influence product preference. Advertisements featuring products and athletes were found to be preferred to advertisements featuring products only. Thirdly, the product purchase intention was found to be influenced more when the advertisement featured both the product and an athlete, compared to when it featured the product only.Journal of Brand Management (2005) 12, 191–205; doi:10.1057/palgrave.bm.2540215
Article
The present study was designed to assess selected psychometric properties of the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory (IMI) (Ryan, 1982), a multidimensional measure of subjects' experience with regard to experimental tasks. Subjects (N = 116) competed in a basketball free-throw shooting game, following which they completed the IMI. The LISREL VI computer program was employed to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis to assess the tenability of a five factor hierarchical model representing four first-order factors or dimensions and a second-order general factor representing intrinsic motivation. Indices of model acceptability tentatively suggest that the sport data adequately fit the hypothesized five factor hierarchical model. Alternative models were tested but did not result in significant improvements in the goodness-of-fit indices, suggesting the proposed model to be the most accurate of the models tested. Coefficient alphas for the four dimensions and the overall scale indicated adequate reliability. The results are discussed with regard to the importance of accurate assessment of psychological constructs and the use of linear structural equations in confirming the factor structures of measures.
Article
The responses of naive mallard ducklings to simple moving models and to simple calls (rapidly repeated
Article
This investigation examined the factor structure and correlates of the Reasons for Exercise Inventory among 101 exercising women. Subjects completed the 24-item inventory (with one added item), reported their weekly frequency of exercise, and completed two standardized body-image measures. Factor analysis indicated that, with minor modifications, the instrument has an internally consistent structure with four factors of Appearance/Weight Management, Fitness/Health Management, Stress/Mood Management, and Socializing. Appearance/Weight Management was associated with a more negative body image independent of actual body mass and was the only motive related to self-reported frequency of exercise.
Article
The two studies reported in this paper were designed to evaluate the efficacy of a multidimensional model of body image that incorporated the dimensions of perception, affect, cognition, and behavior. Study 1 selected items from established measures that were judged to reflect these four dimensions. This four-factor model was then tested in Study 2. The participants for Study 2 were 175 females. The results did not support the hypothesized four-factor model. An exploratory factor analysis revealed a model that consisted of three factors: Cognitions and Affect Regarding Body, Body Importance and Dieting Behavior, and Perceptual Body Image. Below-average-weight respondents rated the Cognitions and Affect Regarding Body factor as more important than did above-average-weight respondents. Below-average-weight respondents overestimated their body size, whereas average-weight and above-average-weight respondents made underestimates, with above-average-weight respondents underestimating their body size to a greater extent than average-weight respondents. The results highlight the multidimensionality of the body image construct and the difficulty in attempting to simplify this construct. Implications of these findings for better understanding problems among people with disturbed body image are discussed.
Article
This study aimed to investigate the effects of both past and current physical activity and media use on women's body image. A sample of 144 female undergraduate students completed measures of current physical activity, media use and body image, as well as providing retrospective reports of their physical activity participation and media usage during childhood and adolescence. Regression analyses showed that childhood experiences of physical activity and media use predicted adult body-image concerns more strongly than current activities. It was concluded that early experiences of both physical activity and media use during childhood and adolescence play an important role in the development of adult women's body image.
Article
In 1995 the American College of Sports Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published national guidelines on Physical Activity and Public Health. The Committee on Exercise and Cardiac Rehabilitation of the American Heart Association endorsed and supported these recommendations. The purpose of the present report is to update and clarify the 1995 recommendations on the types and amounts of physical activity needed by healthy adults to improve and maintain health. Development of this document was by an expert panel of scientists, including physicians, epidemiologists, exercise scientists, and public health specialists. This panel reviewed advances in pertinent physiologic, epidemiologic, and clinical scientific data, including primary research articles and reviews published since the original recommendation was issued in 1995. Issues considered by the panel included new scientific evidence relating physical activity to health, physical activity recommendations by various organizations in the interim, and communications issues. Key points related to updating the physical activity recommendation were outlined and writing groups were formed. A draft manuscript was prepared and circulated for review to the expert panel as well as to outside experts. Comments were integrated into the final recommendation. PRIMARY RECOMMENDATION: To promote and maintain health, all healthy adults aged 18 to 65 yr need moderate-intensity aerobic (endurance) physical activity for a minimum of 30 min on five days each week or vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity for a minimum of 20 min on three days each week. [I (A)] Combinations of moderate- and vigorous-intensity activity can be performed to meet this recommendation. [IIa (B)] For example, a person can meet the recommendation by walking briskly for 30 min twice during the week and then jogging for 20 min on two other days. Moderate-intensity aerobic activity, which is generally equivalent to a brisk walk and noticeably accelerates the heart rate, can be accumulated toward the 30-min minimum by performing bouts each lasting 10 or more minutes. [I (B)] Vigorous-intensity activity is exemplified by jogging, and causes rapid breathing and a substantial increase in heart rate. In addition, every adult should perform activities that maintain or increase muscular strength and endurance a minimum of two days each week. [IIa (A)] Because of the dose-response relation between physical activity and health, persons who wish to further improve their personal fitness, reduce their risk for chronic diseases and disabilities or prevent unhealthy weight gain may benefit by exceeding the minimum recommended amounts of physical activity. [I (A)].
How "healthful" are aerobic classes? Exploring the health and wellness messages in aerobics classes for women. Health Care for Women International
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Use of the Danish adoption register for the study of obesity and thinness The genetics of neurological and psychiatric disorders
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ACSM's guidelines for exercise testing and prescription
American College of Sports Medicine. (2013). ACSM's guidelines for exercise testing and prescription. Baltimore, MD: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.