Only recently, health care professionals have shown a ‘healthy’ consideration for the interrelatedness of mental/physical wellbeing
For years, our industrialised society tended to separate the mind and body, arguably, following a ‘one size fits all’ approach to medicate people with drugs. Slowly but surely, it is now becoming common practice for health care professionals to prescribe exercise to both treat and prevent a wide range of mental/physical health issues. Finally, we are beginning to respect the duality mind and body. Today we tend to combine both physical and mental health as falling under the umbrella term of ‘Wellbeing’.
Today, with the evolving research showing the positive effects of exercise on physical and mental health, exercise psychology is beginning to creep into the forefront of the fitness industry. Most well-established training providers offer short, mental health awareness or behaviour change, career and personal development (CPD) courses. However, the ‘big guns’ of research and applied knowledge can be found in well-established Undergrade/Post graduate programs in Sports and Exercise psychology. Health Psychology also plays a key role.
Exercise psychology is focused on both the research and application of psychological concepts to help people engage with and adhere to regular exercise/physical activity. Additionally, Exercise psychology investigates the preventive and therapeutic effects of exercise on mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression, addiction and resilience to stress. Sport psychology is also concerned with the engagement, adherence and resilience to stress in sports.
However, Sports psych is mostly focused on optimising Athletic performance, with most Athletes already achieving an optimal/advanced level physical activity/exercise.
Exceptions to this might include darts and snooker players, but lets stay on course..you get my drift!
In no order, I will rattle-off some key areas of interest within the field of Exercise psychology. As with most areas of psychological research, we can see huge overlaps between various theories, concepts and underlying philosophies. These include, Motivation; Self-Esteem; Self-Efficacy; Stress Tolerance (resilience); Mood improvement; Exercise Dependence; Exercise Deprivation; Exercise Setting (urban or green spaces); sleep quality; Anxiety; Depression; Cognitive Function and Addiction. Take a breath!. I intend to discuss and make these topics more palatable within future Blogs, stay tuned.
Another key area within Exercise psychology, and arguably the most import from an applied perspective, is ‘behaviour change’ research. Both Exercise and Health psychologists predominantly use the same models of behaviour change, achieving some amazing advances in their prospective fields. In my view, behaviour change is ‘top of the pops’ because most research will hit a brick wall if Psychologist/coaches cannot operationalise data to provide a clear path for people to make positive changes in their lives.
Another hot topic and one of my personal favourites within Exercise psychology is ‘Green Exercise’. Green Exercise is a term used to define physical activity/exercise in an outdoor, green-space environments. A green-space is an open, undeveloped land with natural vegetation. I will look forward to discussing these exciting and impactful topics in my next blog. Until then, lace up those training shoes and start moving.
Matt Adey MSc, Dip PT, GMBPsS
