12.8: Conclusion and Recommendations for Professional Practice

As exercise and sport professionals, we understand that exercise is a many-splendored thing (Ekkekakis & Dafermos, 2012). Therefore, our overarching purpose is to guide as many individuals to experience these splendors as possible. At the same time, until, as a field, we discover and implement methods to meaningfully increase physical activity among the general population, we will not have achieved our purpose. If we continue to fail to achieve this goal, there may be fewer opportunities for those pursuing careers as exercise professionals and the growth of our field may stagnate, or worse, deteriorate. Based on the evidence-base outlined in this chapter, it is becoming increasingly apparent that affective responses to exercise are a critical, but often overlooked, influence on exercise adherence. Given the ease with which measures of affective responses to exercise may be administered to clients, we suggest that, in addition to focusing on safety and effectiveness, practitioners should consider whether their clients experience pleasure during the prescribed exercise (Ekkekakis et al., 2011; Ladwig et al., 2017). Using this "affect-based" exercise prescription methodology may help new and returning (i.e., those who were once active but have been chronically sedentary) exercisers experience moment-to-moment pleasure as they begin an exercise regimen. Maximizing pleasure during exercise may increase the odds that clients remember the experience as pleasant, which, in turn, could improve their affective forecast of how they will feel repeating the exercise behavior. Careful consideration of all of these factors may increase the odds of exercise adherence.

In the preceding sections, we attempted to provide a framework to disseminate affect-based exercise prescription into regular practice among exercise professionals. Although affective responses are a complicated psychological construct to comprehend, we believe that considering the following steps will help current and future practicing professionals to rapidly incorporate this approach into their day-to-day interactions with clients:

1. First, remember that affective responses are highly variable between individuals. Therefore, it is unlikely that your clients (especially those who are chronically sedentary, unfit, or have obesity) will feel the same pleasure during exercise as students immersed in the study of exercise or sport science.
2. Always be cognizant that both (a) the way you present yourself to your clients and (b) the exercise environment can influence how your clients feel. There is a reasonable likelihood that you, an exercise professional, will be more physically fit than your clients. These discrepancies in fitness may be intimidating to some clients, so try not to draw attention to it (e.g., wearing sleeveless or revealing attire, demonstrating movements that are far beyond the skill or fitness level of your clients). In addition, some clients may prefer to exercise alone versus in the presence of others. Assessing client preferences and then subsequently acting appropriately based on those preferences may help to improve the affective experiences of your clients.
3. Frequently measure the affective responses of your clients and consider modifications based on these data. If you discover a client experiences displeasure during a certain exercise intensity, duration, and/or modality, changes to make the experience more pleasant may be necessary. These may prove to be simple, (e.g., such as reducing intensity or duration) or more complicated, such as when the modality itself is causing displeasure (e.g., non-weight bearing exercise may be more pleasurable than weight-bearing exercise for clients with excessive body mass or other biomechanical limitations). In other cases where exercise intensity is light-to-moderate, audiovisual stimuli may provide a distraction that could render mildly unpleasant exercise as more pleasant. Some modifications will require creativity from the exercise professional to ensure that the client experiences exercise as pleasantly as possible. At the same time, the extra effort committed to help a client discover what exercises maximize their pleasure could pay off for the exercise professional in the form of improved adherence, and, therefore,a more successful and consistent client base.