Following is the abstract of a study entitled “Age-related changes in motivation to exercise among highly active individuals” and published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine Supplement:
“Research on exercise motivation has largely been limited to inactive individuals. When active people are studied, it is often in the context of pathology, such as exercise dependence, overtraining, injury or along a narrow range of motivational factors, such as competency or socialization. Furthermore, only a few studies have examined exercise motivation for large cohorts of individuals across the lifespan. The purpose of this investigation was to determine differences in motivation across age and gender in a group of highly active individuals. A total of 2300 endurance athletes (triathletes, swimmers, cyclists and runners) completed online surveys regarding their physical activity and goals. These individuals (18–60 yrs) exercised an average of 5.01 d/wk, with 60% completing 75+ min/day. Participants ranked their top 3 motivations to exercise from a list of 10 intrinsic and extrinsic factors: health, weight, performance, living longer, stress reduction, appearance, mood, fitness, enjoyment, and social interactions. The top 3 motivators across all age groups were enjoyment (56.9%), performance (53.0%), and health (52.2%). However, these were not invariant across ages. Performance motivation decreased from 79.7% for those aged 18–24 yrs to 37.8% for those 55–64 yrs. Living longer was a top motivator for only 8.2% of the youngest group, but 26.1% of the oldest. Improving fitness was more important than performance for only the oldest age-group. Women selected weight maintenance (26.8% vs. 17.4%) and appearance (15.7% vs. 7.0%) to a greater degree than men. Men endorsed improving performance (54.6% vs. 47.1%), living longer (18.5% vs. 9.7%), and feeling better (26.0% vs. 20.3%) as their top motivators. Results indicate that each age-group and gender has a variety of motivators and these differences should be considered when designing exercise prescriptions.”
