What is it about?
Staying active is important for older adults to stay healthy, but not many do enough muscle-strengthening exercises. This study looked at what older adults prefer when it comes to exercise and how confident they feel about doing it. We asked over 600 older adults in the US about their preferred program and the program they were most confident they could actually do regarding two types of strength training: one that's longer but less frequent, and one that's shorter but done every day.
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Why is it important?
We found that most older adults liked the shorter, daily exercise better. But when we asked how confident they felt about doing each type of exercise, we found something interesting: some people preferred the longer, less frequent exercise even though they felt more confident about actually being able to do the shorter one. This shows that what people like isn't always what they believe they can do well - which has implications for designing exercise programs based on what people say they like. This strategy may not result in the best long-term adherence to the program
Perspectives
I hope this article leads program planners to consider factors beyond the "customer is always right". Everyone has preferences -- and most of them do not derive from strictly logical, entirely rational deliberation. When designing programs of any type, I think that using a more meaningful, empirically-supported metric beyond "preference" has the potential to significantly improve its effectiveness. This study is a "proof-of-concept" -- suggesting that people do not always prefer the things that they are most likely to continue to use.
Jordan Kurth
Pennsylvania State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Comparing preferences to evaluations of barrier self-efficacy for two strength training programs in US older adults, PLOS One, May 2024, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0302892.
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