Remaining physically active is important in maintaining good health and reducing disease potential; however a lack of devotion exists in maintaining healthy exercise habits. Because the American population lacks initiative to stay active, obesity rates and preventative health risks are a reoccurring problem. Motivation to exercise may be affected by perceived barriers. These barriers (structural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal) may be different by gender, thus impacting how professionals develop and implement exercise programming (type of class, activity, and sport, group). These perceived barriers: lack of time, social support, money, accessibility, and type of exercise, group or individual may be important in addressing physical activity needs by gender. Because many classes have few men and it is more time and cost efficient to deliver exercise classes, it may be of importance to examine barrier difference by gender. The purpose of this study was to describe barriers by gender to active participation in group exercise classes.
Method:
Using SurveyMonkey, participants from a variety of campus and community locations were asked to complete the instrument. Participants completed a valid a reliable instrument: Barriers to Exercise Participation (interpersonal, intrapersonal, and structural). The instrument had 26 questions ranging from 1 (low level) to 5 (high level constraint). Only individuals who were not engaged in exercise classes were included in the initial pool. To obtain equal participants, 80 surveys were randomly selected from the week’s total participants, with 62 surveys meeting criteria (78%) (Men=30, women = 32). Subtest scores were analyzed in SPSS 18.0 using t-tests, p<.05.
Analysis/Results:
A significant differences was found by gender on structural perceived barriers to exercise t(60) = 5.53, p=.014. Men (M = 10.10 + 2.13) had significantly higher structural perceived barriers compared to women (M=8.68 + 2.23). Although not significant, men were higher on all barriers to exercise compared to women (interpersonal p=.07; intrapersonal p = .08).
Conclusions:
Findings for structural barriers to group exercise were similar to previous studies, yet inconsistent with findings relative to interpersonal and intrapersonal barriers. With this study, men held similar views as women about stress, depression, perceived self- skills, stereotypes, and need for partners. Men appear to dislike classroom instruction, classrooms with windows, flamboyant body moves, type of class (competitive versus dance oriented), cost, travel, and class time. Perhaps offering group activities for men is counterproductive; rather offer men structural activities that match their perceived needs: more competition and dynamic strength activities.