When Pandemic Hits: Exercise Frequency and Subjective Well-Being During COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The governmental lockdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic have forced people to change their behavior in many ways including changes in exercise. We used the brief window of global lockdown in the months of March/April/May 2020 as an opportunity to investigate the effects of externally imposed restrictions on exercise-related routines and related changes in subjective well-being. Statistical analyses are based on data from 13,696 respondents in 18 countries using a cross-sectional online survey. A mixed effects modeling approach was used to analyze data. We tested whether exercise frequency before and during the pandemic would influence mood during the pandemic. Additionally, we used the COVID-19 pandemic data to build a prediction model, while controlling for national differences, to estimate changes in exercise frequency during similar future lockdown conditions depending on prelockdown exercise frequency. According to the prediction model, those who rarely exercise before a lockdown tend to increase their exercise frequency during it, and those who are frequent exercisers before a lockdown tend to maintain it. With regards to subjective well-being, the data show that those who exercised almost every day during this pandemic had the best mood, regardless of whether or not they exercised prepandemic. Those who were inactive prepandemic and slightly increased their exercise frequency during the pandemic, reported no change in mood compared to those who remained inactive during the pandemic. Those who reduced their exercise frequency during the pandemic reported worse mood compared to those who maintained or increased their prepandemic exercise frequency. This study suggests that under similar lockdown conditions, about two thirds of those who never or rarely exercise before a lockdown might adopt an exercise behavior or increase their exercise frequency. However, such changes do not always immediately result in improvement in subjective well-being. These results may inform national policies, as well as health behavior and exercise psychology research on the importance of exercise promotion, and prediction of changes in exercise behavior during future pandemics.

Change in mental health, physical health, and social relationships during highly restrictive lockdown in the COVID-19 pandemic: evidence from Australia

“…Our finding of significant associations between frequency of exercise, physical well-being and emotional well-being are consistent with other studies conducted during the pandemic that indicate lockdown experiences can disrupt and reduce exercise routines, which can have flow on effects for reducing physical and mental wellbeing (Brand et al, 2020;Ebrahimi et al, 2020;Galle et al, 2020;Marashi et al, 2020). Therefore, in any future pandemic scenario it would be useful for both broad scale interventions (e.g., public service announcements) and individual interventions conducted by mental health practitioners to promote healthy exercise and diet practices.…”

“…Another reason is that some individuals may have increased exercise (with more time on their hands) that cancels out those exercising less. Consistent with other recent studies (Brand et al, 2020;Ebrahimi et al, 2020;Galle et al, 2020;Marashi et al, 2020), we found a link between frequency of exercise and well-being suggesting that keeping physically active can potentially act as a buffer for stress during lock-down.…”

“…Other researchers have reported how people with pre-existing medical problems (Mazza et al, 2020) or chronic disease (Ozamiz-Etxebarria et al, 2020) are more likely to have exacerbated stress levels worrying about COVID-19 compared to more healthy individuals. While keeping physically healthy, by keeping physically active during lockdown, has been reported to be a protective factor against stress (Brand et al, 2020;Ebrahimi et al, 2020;Galle et al, 2020;Marashi et al, 2020). In a survey of 10084 people from Norway Ebrahimi et al (2020) found that those people engaging in higher frequency of physical activity during lockdown were more likely to report lower levels of depression.…”

“…Some recent Australian surveys have been conducted showing that the April lockdown experience, similar to other parts of the world, had a broadly negative impact on mental health (Biddle et al, 2020a;Brand et al, 2020;Fisher et al, 2020;Li et al, 2020;Newby et al, 2020;Phillipou et al, 2020;Rossell et al, 2020;Stanton et al, 2020;Titov et al, 2020;van Agteren et al, 2020). In a survey of 5070 Australians in the first week of April Newby et al (2020) found that 55% of respondents felt their mental health had worsened a little, and 23% a lot.…”

Physical Activity and Mental Health of Patients with Pulmonary Hypertension during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Data suggests that PH patients might be very susceptible to mental impairment due to pandemic restrictions and protection measures. Remaining physically active though has been associated with better mental health scores during this pandemic [ 13 , 16 ]. Whether this also applies to PH patients is currently unknown.…”