Social Support Helps You Go Further

To maintain a healthy lifestyle we have to eat healthily and make sure we engage in regular physical activity. Many people find themselves eating healthily or exercising regularly for only a limited time and it is often reported that this is due to a lack of social support from friends and family or work colleagues. Everyone is different in their needs and some people are able to motivate and support themselves with little or no encouragement from others, however, there are those of us that require more social support for encouragement, motivation and feedback from our friends and family. Every person has their own approach to exercise and healthy living, but involving others in this can certainly help us maintain our motivation and has been shown to increase our exercise participation for longer periods of time compared to those people with less social support (Courneya & McAuley, 1995; Fraser & Spink, 2002).

With this in mind it would be beneficial for us to engage in social support more often, be that with family members or friends or even within a specific exercise group with people in a similar situation as yourself. In fact, research suggests that those engaging in exercise with people in similar circumstances are more likely to continue physical exercise for longer periods of time due to the idea of a “team goal”, i.e. working towards the same end by losing weight, running in a charity event or attending an exercise class every week. Goals are specific to you, but research has found that with social support and working towards this goal with others can aid you to achieve this goal, not necessarily quicker, but much more effectively (Spink & Carron, 1992; Oman & Duncan, 1995).

How can we increase our social support and increase our exercise motivation successfully? Involve your friends and family members in your improvements and achievements. The most important types of social support are emotional support and constructive feedback. Engaging regularly with others to discuss your development within exercise provides you with the opportunity to not only receive helpful feedback to continue to improve and exercise regularly, but also provides you with regular confidence and an increase in self-esteem as you continue to exercise. As well as providing increases in motivation and attitude towards exercise, social support provides you with the opportunity to improve your mood and self-esteem, which of course, is always an added benefit as you receive regular support from your family and friends. Remember that we are social creatures and engaging in exercise on a more social basis rather than restricting yourself to solitary physical exercise will help to you maintain a more consistent routine of exercise over a much longer period of time compared to exercising on your own, without the added benefits that social support provides us with.

KEY POINT: Make sure to discuss your exercise routine with friends and family, make it interesting and discuss where you are improving and what you want achieve. Social support can be a key ingredient to achieving what we wish to achieve as well providing us with confidence and motivation to continue to exercise much more regularly.

Thomas Buck (Research Assistant, Rescon)