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A new study, testing the benefits of a virtual exercise partner,shows that the presence of a moderately more capable cyclingpartner boosts motivation to stick to an exercise program. The workby Brandon Irwin and colleagues, from Michigan State University inthe US, is published online in Springer's journal, Annals of Behavioral Medicine. For many people, lack of motivation is a barrier to achieving boththe recommended amount and intensity of exercise. Using theprinciples of group exercise, which is known to increase people'smotivation to stick to an exercise program, the researchersinvestigated whether a virtually present partner would influenceparticipants' motivation to exercise for longer. A total of 58 young women, recruited from university-based physicalactivity courses, took part in the experiment and exercised on astationary bike on six separate days, including one trainingsession. They were split into three groups. The first groupexercised independently alongside a virtual person. The secondgroup also exercised alongside a virtual person but this time theyworked as a team, and the performance of the team was determined bythe weakest link i.e. the one who stopped exercising first. Thethird group cycled alone. At the start of the experiment, the women in groups 1 and 2 wereassigned a 'virtually present partner' - also a female - for theride and were told that their partner would be riding at the sametime they were, on a similar bike in another lab. The women 'met'their partners via a pre-recorded video-chat, and were told thattheir partner's performance was moderately better than their own.During the exercise sessions, participants were able to track theirpartner's progress by watching the partner ride, on what lookedlike a live feed but was in fact a recording. All students rode a video-game exercise bike for as long as theyfelt comfortable. They were then asked to rate their intention toexercise again, how well they felt they had done, and how tiredthey felt. The researchers measured how hard they had worked. Overall, exercising with a virtually present partner improvedperformance on the cycling task: Participants cycled for longerwhen working alongside a more capable partner than when exercisingalone. Across sessions, those women who exercised as part of a teamcycled, on average, two minutes longer than those who exercisedindependently with a partner (22 versus 20 minutes), and twice aslong as those who exercised without a partner (22 versus 11minutes). In terms of motivation, there was a marked decline in intent toexercise among those who cycled on their own. In contrast, thosewho cycled with a virtual partner reported no decline in motivationto exercise. The authors conclude: "Being able to more than double one'sperformance is a substantial gain for those trying to increasetheir physical activity. These results are encouraging and suggestthat the gains we observed over six hour-long sessions could besustained on a longer-term program of exercise. This may be ofparticular value in future efforts to help people meet physicalactivity recommendations." Additional References Citations. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as China Fleet GPS Systems , Vehicle GPS Tracking Devices for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits AVL GPS System.
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