Over six months needed to start exercise habit

Hayley Dunning
The Gateway
(University of Alberta)
EDMONTON (CUP) — Wendy Rodgers has discovered that it takes more than six months to make exercising a daily routine.
The University of Alberta physical education professor conducted a series of studies to determine wheth- er the myth that exercise can become a habit after six months was true or not.

Her research began by ranking participants’ motivations for exercising. She determined that there are two types of motivators when it came to exercising. One was the self-determination principle, where people exercised for a variety of reasons from internal motives, such as exercise being a value or part of their identity. The second motivator was external motives, such as being forced to exercise or feeling obligated.
Rodgers found that people who regularly exercised a minimum of three times per week for at least a year were far more likely to express internal motives than those who were new to exercise, even after six months.
“There’s a little bit of a belief system that’s been put forward by older research that by the time you’ve stuck with a new exercise [for] six months, you’d be in the maintenance stage; you’d be ready to just carry on and don’t really need to pay much special attention,” said Rodgers after dismissing the notion.
After analyzing the motivational data from several previous studies encompassing hundreds of new participants, many were still not expressing as many internal motives as life-long exercisers, even after six months of study. People exercising due to internal factors kept exercising for longer periods of time and were less likely to quit when faced with challenges.
Unfortunately, the outcome is bad news for many: those wanting to stay on track with their exercise routine will need to stay determined longer, as it appears there is still a risk of quitting their new regimes for lack of motivation. In addition, there is no evidence indicating when the maintenance stage actually begins, but Rodgers thinks it is possibly up to one year.
According to Rodgers, 60 percent of Canadians are currently classified as sedentary – meaning they exhibit little to no participation in physical activity – and less than 30 percent reach the guidelines for being physically active.
Though the outlook seems dim, Rodgers hopes that this study will help people understand that they will need to put a lot of commitment in to exercising and that they should keep at it even if they don’t feel like it.
“If you’re just starting off exercising, for probably up to a year, you’re going to be talking yourself into it a fair bit. It’s going to take a while; you’re probably still going to have some lapses,” said Rodgers.
Her advice is to find time to exercise even with a busy class and social schedule.
“Around 20 years old [is] a nice time to start building on those skills and to not be discouraged […] be- cause it’s important for long-term health. We say that this is the period when you are gathering life skills that are going to enable you to carry on later.”
Rodgers completed the study with colleagues from the University of Western Ontario.