Sport And Exercise Psychology: A Critical Introduction

Chapter 8

Does a healthy body always lead to a

healthy mind? Exploring exercise

psychology

(with the assistance of Tadhg MacIntyre)

I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only
works with my legs. (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1953/1781, p. 382)
Our muscular vigour will...always be needed to furnish the background of sanity,
serenity, and cheerfulness to life ...and make us good-humoured. (William James, 1899,
pp. 205–207)
Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don’t need it. And if you are sick, then you
shouldn’t take it! (attributed to Henry Ford)
Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until it passes. (Actor Al Pacino, cited
in The Sunday Times, 2002, p. 12)
Throughout most of human history and outside the first world nowadays, food has
been relatively scarce and physical exercise abundant; only when the status of these two
things is reversed does “exercise” make sense. (Solnit, 2001, p. 261)

Introduction

In recent years, a great deal of research evidence has accumulated to show that regular
physical activity is associated with a range of physical and mental health benefits (e.g.,
see Biddle and Mutrie, 2001; Mutrie, 2002). Sadly, despite the compelling nature of this
evidence, many people are reluctant to take up leisure-time physical activity (the exercise
initiation problem) and/or are easily dissuaded from continuing with it (the exercise
adherence or maintenance problem). To illustrate, surveys show that only about 25 per
cent of the adult population of most industrialised countries are regularly active and that
only 10 per cent of such populations exercise either sufficiently vigorously (e.g., by
jogging, running) or often to obtain significant benefits in fitness (Dishman, 2001). These
statistics suggest not only that physical inactivity is a growing concern for many
communities but also that intervention campaigns are required to promote exercise
initiation and adherence (Marcus and Forsyth, 2003). Unfortunately, such interventions
face formidable barriers. For example, despite the fact that most people report feeling
refreshed or invigorated after they have exercised (Gauvin and Rejeski, 1993), about half
of those who commence a supervised physical activity programme drop out of it within
six months (Dishman, 2001). Although these twin difficulties of exercise initiation and
exercise adherence have been acknowledged by scholars for several decades, little