Empowering Exercise And Physical Activity Engagement Among Women

Most adult women do not meet physical activity (PA) guidelines, including aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities. Exercise is a sub-set of PA that includes cardiorespiratory (CT), resistance (RT), flexibility (FT), and neuromotor (NT) training. Engagement in regular exercise is essential to maintain physical fitness and health. However, the relationship between empowering exercise and engagement in PA is unclear. PURPOSE: To explore the relationship between self-rated empowering exercise type and exercise engagement. METHODS: Mid-western women (N = 175) aged 18-65, 90% white, completed an online cross-sectional survey. Self-reported exercise engagement via the Godin-Shepard Leisure Time PA Questionnaire (GSLTPAQ) and exercise empowerment were collected. The GSLTPAQ assesses the current frequency of participants’ engagement in leisure-time PA in metabolic equivalents to arbitrary calculated units. Scores over 24 units indicate that the participant is adequately active. Participants ranked exercise empowerment by entering the PA type they found most empowering in an open-ended question. PA types were coded by training type (1 = CT, 2 = RT, 3 = NT, 4 = other; FT was not ranked). Since only three participants were coded NT and one as other, those respondents were not included in the analysis, leaving 87 responses that included answers to GSLTPAQ and empowerment rank. Due to skewed data, Mann-Whitney U-tests were used for between-group differences. RESULTS: Mean units for total PA (light-intensity + moderate-intensity + vigorous-intensity) among CT-empowered women (n = 53) were 45.6 ± 4.0 and 53.6 ± 4.2 among RT-empowered women (n = 34). For moderate to vigorous PA (MVPA), CT-empowered women averaged 35.5 ± 3.8; RT-empowered women averaged 43.3 ± 3.7. The unit differences were statistically insignificant (PA U = 735, p = 0.149; MVPA U = 716.5, p = 0.108). CONCLUSION: Though not statistically significant, RT-empowered women reported more average PA and MVPA than CT-empowered women. Women report meeting the aerobic more than the muscle-strengthening portion of the guidelines. However, our data reveal that women empowered by muscle-strengthening exercises (RT) seem to engage in more PA than CT-empowered women. Exploring empowerment in exercise may reveal mechanisms to facilitate PA engagement.