Powering Adherence to Physical Activity by Changing Self-Regulatory Skills and Beliefs: Are Kinesiologists Ready to Counsel?

Abstract

There are multiple avenues to gain health promoting and disease preventing benefits of physical activity (PA) but nonadherence makes health benefits short-lived. Gains obtained through structured exercise training and therapy quickly decay once participants leave programs. Scientific position statements underscore cognitive-behavioral strategies (CBS) as an essential intervention component to increase and maintain PA and recommend transfer of CBS knowledge to practice. Our review of reviews indicates high quality PA interventions involving CBS consistently demonstrate medium effect sizes. Kinesiologists are the human resource capacity to translate this knowledge. Building capacity to implement CBS knowledge is potentially large given North American kinesiology programs and American College of Sports Medicine and Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology certification routes. Yet CBS training of kinesiologists by universities and organizations is minimal. Immediate change in CBS training and practice is needed. Professional organizations/institutions can either be leaders in developing human resources or part of the problem should they fail to address the challenge of CBS training.

Promoting Physical Activity in Parks

“…Examples of this include the opportunities to practice their motivational interviewing skills, as well as guide residents in learning self-regulatory skills like action planning and self-monitoring, that would help the resident increase their own physical activity. These regulatory skills are commonly identified as key factors in physical activity adherence, and are a skill that many Kinesiology students are not exposed to during their training (Brawley et al, 2013). Anecdotally, through the reflections, students reported having to push themselves, as talking with strangers about physical activity is not something they had been exposed to yet in their schooling.…”

“…Common compenents of health coaching include motivational interviewing, and teaching behavior change skills such as goal setting, and selfmonitoring (Olsen & Nesbitt, 2010). It has been suggested that there is a need for Kinesiology students to learn and practice these skills of motivational interviewing and behavior change as it is not currently common among Kinesiology programs (Brawley, Gierc, & Locke, 2013).…”

College Health Students’ Knowledge and Perceptions of Exercise Benefits and Dysfunctional Exercise

“…There is a growing body of literature on the knowledge of training for health promotion professionals (Brawley, Gierc, & Locke, 2013;Davidson, 2008). A panel of nationally recognized health education leaders identified "communication" as one of the nine areas of competency that health educators need but often lack (Allegrante, Moon, Auld, & Gebbie, 2001).…”

Encouraging healthy spine habits to prevent low back pain in children: an observational study of adherence to exercise

“…Studies investigating habit formation are sparse, use small sample sizes [24,25], and rarely focus on strategies required to maintain change [26]. Limited guidance for helping people to maintain behaviour change may, in part, explain poor long-term adherence to programmes [12,18,19,21,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31].…”