The treatment of noncommunicable diseases (NCD), like coronary heart disease or type 2 diabetes mellitus, causes rising costs for the health system. Physical activity is supposed to reduce the risk ...for these diseases. Results of cross-sectional studies showed that physical activity is associated with better health, and that physical activity could prevent the development of these diseases. The purpose of this review is to summarize existing evidence for the long-term (>5 years) relationship between physical activity and weight gain, obesity, coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, Alzheimer's disease and dementia.
Fifteen longitudinal studies with at least 5-year follow up times and a total of 288,724 subjects (>500 participants in each study), aged between 18 and 85 years, were identified using digital databases. Only studies published in English, about healthy adults at baseline, intentional physical activity and the listed NCDs were included.
The results of these studies show that physical activity appears to have a positive long-term influence on all selected diseases.
This review revealed a paucity of long-term studies on the relationship between physical activity and the incidence of NCD.
Although previous research has shown that emotions are consistently associated with sport and exercise behavior, the working mechanisms are not understood to the extent of creating an intervention. ...The aim of this study is to identify situations and aspects of recreational sport and exercise, which lead to positive emotional reactions in people taking part in regular and long-term exercise. In this study, 24 adults (12 female, 12 male) distributed over three age groups (young, middle, and late adulthood), took part in recreational sports (individual or team sport) for at least 5 years. Semi-structured in depth interviews with questions about sport and exercise habits, long term participation and emotional response in a sporting environment were conducted in order to ascertain those situations and aspects of the exercise program triggering positive emotions. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and followed Grounded Theory principles. Emerging concepts were grouped and merged into different categories representing the key aspects of sport and exercise. Four factors were identified which are associated with the emergence of positive emotions in recreational sport and exercise. Firstly, perceived competence is one of the major factors influencing emotions during exercise and can represent individual and collective success and progress, competition and challenge. Secondly, perceived social interaction is another factor comprising of all sorts of peer-related aspects such as communication with others, being part of a group and creating close relationships or friendships. Thirdly, novelty experience in contrast to other none-sporting activities such as work, family or other leisure activities was another factor. The last factor found was the perceived physical exertion comprising of the degree of exhaustion, a possibly delayed turnaround in the emotional response and the aspect of sport being a physical compensation for everyday sedentary life. The results of this study provide the starting point for the development of interventions to enhance positive emotions in sports in order to increase maintenance and adherence to recreational sport and exercise.
To explain physical activity behavior, social-cognitive theories were most commonly used in the past. Besides conscious processes, the approach of dual processes additionally incorporates ...non-conscious regulatory processes into physical activity behavior theories. Habits are one of various non-conscious variables that can influence behavior and thus play an important role in terms of behavior change. The aim of this review was to examine the relationship between habit strength and physical activity behavior in longitudinal studies.
According to the PRISMA guidelines, a systematic search was conducted in three databases. Only peer-reviewed articles using a longitudinal study design were included. Both, habit and physical activity were measured at least once, and habit was related to physical activity behavior. Study quality was evaluated by assessment tools of the NHLBI.
Of 3.382 identified publications between 2016 and 2019, fifteen studies with different study designs were included. Most studies supported that positive correlations between habit and physical activity exist. Some positive direct and indirect effects of habit on physical activity were detected and only a minority of studies showed the influence of physical activity on habit strength. Studies differentiating between instigation and execution habit found positive correlations and revealed instigation habit as a stronger predictor of physical activity. The quality of studies was rated as reasonable using assessment tools of the NHLBI.
This review revealed a bidirectional relationship between habit and physical activity. Whether habit predicts physical activity or vice versa is still unclear. The observation of habit influencing physical activity may be most appropriate in studies fostering physical activity maintenance while the influence of physical activity on habit may be reasonable in experimental studies with physical activity as intervention content to form a habit. Future investigations should differentiate between habit formation and physical activity maintenance studies depending on the research objective. Long-term study designs addressing the complexity of habitual behavior would be beneficial for establishing cue-behavior associations for the formation of habits. Furthermore, studies should differentiate between instigation and execution habit in order to investigate the influence of both variables on physical activity behavior independently.
Well-developed theories are necessary to guide the public in increasing physical activity (PA) and promoting physical health. The role of positive affective variables (PAVs) in exercise is gaining ...more attention, but none of the literature has provided a systematic review and quantitative analysis of its mediating role. Therefore, the purposes of this study are (1) to systematically review studies of PA interventions, that use PAVs as the mediating variables, in order to evaluate and provide narrative summaries of these studies; (2) to statistically synthesize evidence for the mechanism of the effects of PAVs on PA outcomes. To conduct an extensive search, a PRISMA-compliant protocol was completed, and five electronic databases had been searched by 1 April 2020. We used a two-stage structural equation modeling (TSSEM) analysis approach to test how interventions trigger the critical PA change process to influence outcomes. The search strategy generated 1,732 papers potentially relevant to this study; forty of these studies met the data extraction criteria for meta-analytic mediation analysis. The path coefficient from intervention to PAV
a
= 0.26 (95% CI = 0.08 to 0.44), the path coefficient from PAV to PA
b
= 0.21 (95% CI = 0.13 to 0.28), and the direct effect from intervention to PA is also significant (
c
= 0.19, 95% CI = 0.12 to 0.26). In addition, the indirect effect of intervention on PA via PAV was statistically significant (
c
' = 0.05, 95% CI = 0.02 to 0.10). This reveals that PAVs partially mediate the relationship between interventions and PA. Our study is the first to systematically summarize the effects of experimental studies to increase PA through PAVs. It is highly recommended to make future interventions more innovative and to target the PAVs as mediators with higher fidelity.
Emotional intelligence (EI) is considered as a factor influencing sport performance. The research findings are inconsistent with respect to the size and even the direction of the relationship, ...however. In order to summarise the available evidence, we conducted a meta-analysis examining the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and sports performance in competitive sports. A systematic literature search was conducted in June 2018. We identified 21 studies targeting EI and sports performance in competitive sports. We calculated correlation (r) to estimate the effect of the relationship. A random effects model was used to interpret findings. The meta-analysis of 22 effect sizes on the response of 3.431 participants found a small but significant relationship between EI and sports performance (
= 0.16). Additionally, the conceptualisation of EI (ability concept, trait concept, or mixed-model concept), type of publication, citation counts, and publication date turned out not to be significant moderators. Overall, the result is encouraging regarding the value of EI as a possible predictor in sports performance.
The purpose of this study was to investigate whether tactical formation affects the physical and technical match performance of professional soccer players in the first German Bundesliga. From ...official match data of the Bundesliga season 2018/19, physical (total distance, high-intensity distance, sprinting distance, accelerations, maximum velocity) and technical performance (short/middle/long passes, dribblings, ball-possessions) of players were analyzed. Players were categorized into five playing positions (center back, full back, central midfielder, wide midfielder, forward) and teams into eight different tactical formations (4-4-2, 4-4-2 diamond, 4-2-2-2, 4-3-3, 4-5-1, 4-2-3-1, 3-4-3, 3-5-2). Results revealed that the degree to which tactical formation affects match performance is position dependent. In terms of physical performance, center backs and full backs showed highest sprinting distances when playing in a formation with only three defenders in the back row (3-4-3, 3-5-2) compared to all other formations (ES range: 0.13≤ES≤1.27). Regarding technical performance, all positions except forwards displayed fewer short passes, middle passes and ball-possessions in the formations 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 compared to all other formations (0.02≤ES≤1.19). In conclusion, physical and technical performance of center backs, full backs and wide midfielders differed markedly between the tactical formations. Conversely, the physical and technical performance of central midfielders and forwards only showed small differences between the different tactical formations. These findings can help coaches scheduling their practice. For example, if a coach wants to change the playing formation, he can anticipate the physical and technical match performance changes depending on the respective playing position.
The purpose of this study is to examine the reciprocal relationship between motor abilities and physical activity and the mediation effects of physical self-concept in this relationship using ...longitudinal data. We expect that the effects of motor abilities on physical activity are rather indirect via physical self-concept and that the effects of physical activity on motor abilities are rather direct without involvement of the motor ability self-concept. Data was obtained from the Motorik-Modul (MoMo) Longitudinal Study in which 335 boys and 363 girls aged 11-17 years old at Baseline were examined twice in a period of six years. Physical activity was assessed by the MoMo Physical Activity Questionnaire for adolescents, physical self-concept by Physical Self-Description Questionnaire and motor abilities by MoMo Motor Test which comprised of the dimensions strength, endurance, coordination and flexibility. Multiple regression analyses were used to analyse the direct and indirect effects. The results of the multiple regression analyses show that the effects of motor abilities on physical activity were only indirect for the dimensions strength, coordination, and flexibility. For the dimension endurance, neither direct nor indirect effects were significant. In the opposite direction, the effects of physical activity on motor abilities were partially mediated by the self-concept of strength. For the dimensions endurance, coordination and flexibility, only indirect were significant. The results of this study support the assumption that the relationship between motor abilities and physical activity is mediated by physical self-concept in both directions. Physical self-concept seems to be an important determinant of adolescents' physical activity. (Autor).
In this article, we introduce a theory on the dynamic development of affective processes, affect regulation, and the relationship between emotions and sport performance. The theory focusses on how ...affective processes emerge and develop during competitive sport involvement. Based on Scherer's component process model, we postulate six components of emotion that interact with each other in a circular fashion: (I) triggering processes, (II) physiological reactions, (III) action tendencies, (IV) expressive behaviors, (V) subjective experience, and (VI) higher cognitive processes. The theory stresses the dynamics of affective processes and describes the consequences for performance in competitive sports. It assumes that the peculiarities of different sports must be taken into account in order to understand the affective processes, and offers starting points on which strategies can be used to effectively regulate affective states. Consequences for research and practice are derived and discussed. To study the development of affective processes, future research should test the assumptions in ecologically valid contexts, such as real competitions or competition-like situations, using multi-component measures of emotions.
The present study contains an affect-based intervention intended to support exercise trainers in positively influencing their course participants’ affective responses to their exercise courses. We ...argue that positive affective responses are associated with habit formation, thereby being a promising approach for avoiding high drop-out rates in exercise courses. First, the present study aimed to investigate whether the intervention for exercise trainers could increase (a) affective attitudes, and (b) exercise instigation habit strength, and influence the development of (c) weekly measured affective responses and (d) automaticity among adult participants of exercise courses. Second, it examined the relationship between the development of affective responses and exercise instigation habit strength. Ten exercise trainers of weekly sports and exercise courses at a German university received either an affect-based intervention or a control intervention. 132 of their course participants answered the Self-Report Habit Index (SRHI; the automaticity sub-scale SRBAI was also analyzed) for exercise instigation habit strength and items to measure affective attitude in the initial and final assessment. Moreover, they were assessed for a duration of 10 weeks during which, each time after attending the course, they reported their affective response to exercise as well as their automaticity in arriving at the decision to exercise. In the repeated measures ANOVA, there was a significant main effect of time for exercise instigation habit strength. Overall, habit strength was higher in the final than in the initial assessment. However, there were no significant differences between the two conditions in all study variables. In the latent growth curve model, the trajectory of the latent growth curve of valence was a significant predictor of the final exercise instigation habit strength. While the applied affect-based intervention was not successful in enhancing positive affective responses to exercise, the results indicate that positive affective responses may contribute to strengthening exercise instigation habits. Future studies should examine the effectiveness of interventions in long-term study designs.