11.1: Introduction

When asking students to identify the benefits of regular physical activity, they will often recall numerous positive physical benefits of exercise such as improved cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, and improved bone health. “Feeling good” is often a response when pressed to cite the psychological benefits of exercise, but such responses are often delivered reflexively with mantras such as “exercise makes you feel good” deeply ingrained. When probing for further critical insight, the notion of exercise inherently "feeling good" begins to be questioned. While exercise can elicit positive affective states among some, it is not a given that exercise will “feel good” for all. For some individuals, exercise is not a consistently pleasant experience, but it might not have to be this way. Researchers are examining different ways to positively shape how we feel about exercise.

Exercise is just one form of physical activity, but it is an effective way to achieve recommended levels of physical activity and can guard against the deleterious effects of sedentary behavior. Acquiring at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity, and two bouts of muscle strengthening activities per week is achievable through structured exercise. Moreover, achieving these targets through one or two sessions per week (the so-called “Weekend Warrior”; Hamer et al., 2017, p. 2) can confer positive mental health outcomes.

As a society, we spend considerable time, effort, and financial resources to shift inactive people towards physical activity. However, if the experience of physical activity is unpleasant, then we have likely wasted much of that time, effort, and money, as unpleasant experiences are unlikely to promote long-term adherence. Efforts to engage people in physical activity will ultimately have limited impact on the broader positive outcomes of physical activity (e.g., longer lives, better quality of life, reduced financial burden on government) without long-term adherence.

A substantial portion of the literature relating to exercise interventions focuses on helping people to initiate exercise, whereas there is less focus on what to do once people begin exercising; that is, the strategies we can employ to influence how people feel during exercise. Perhaps many exercise professionals follow the “exercise makes you feel good” mantra without critically considering whether this is true and might believe that their job is done once they have “convinced” people to exercise. It is long established that exercise is effective at improving health but continued consideration of how we can help facilitate an enjoyable experience is needed.

One approach to exercise promotion is to understand which type of exercise an individual “likes” and advocate that they engage in that activity, but if an inactive individual does not like any mode of exercise (this seems possible, otherwise they would probably be doing it already), then this might be a fruitless task. Perhaps we would then fall back on the exercises that we know and suggest activities such as cycling, running, or swimming. It is very likely that an inactive person has already considered these activities and has decided against them. However, we know that these activities can be very effective at eliciting physiological changes that will lead to improved health, so perhaps we can look again at these activities and consider ways in which we can modify them to make them more enjoyable.

This chapter discusses intrinsic and extrinsic strategies to facilitate pleasant and enjoyable exercise experiences. We define intrinsic strategies as those that modify the components of exercise prescription: Frequency, Intensity, Time, and Type (FITT; see Kohl et al., 2020, p. 22). We focus on modifications to exercise intensity as it is a primary intrinsic factor that drives affective responses to exercise. Extrinsic strategies pertain to environmental manipulations of the exercise experience that fall outside of the FITT principles (e.g., listening to music during exercise). These extrinsic strategies are predominantly employed during exercise, but there are some strategies that could be implemented prior to an exercise session to influence how people feel during that session.

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