Mindfulness Versus Distraction to Improve Affective Response and Promote Cardiovascular Exercise Behavior

Variation in affective response to exercise partially explains high levels of inactivity. Examining ways to improve affective responses to physical activity is, therefore, an important direction for research aiming to promote exercise behavior.

This study compares three strategies: mindfulness, distraction, and an associative focus comparison group as potential strategies to improve affective response to exercise and promote exercise behavior.

Seventy-eight insufficiently active individuals (M age 26.82, 74% female) were randomly assigned to one of the following three conditions: (a) mindfulness, (b) distraction, or (c) associative attentional focus. The study was divided into two phases, a laboratory session in which participants learned their assigned strategy and completed a 30 min supervised exercise bout and an at-home intervention in which participants used their assigned strategy while exercising on their own for 2 weeks and filled out daily surveys.

Seventy-five participants completed the study. The central hypotheses were partially supported. Participants in the mindfulness and distraction conditions maintained more positive affective response to exercise over time compared to participants in the associative focus condition, whose affect became less positive over time (p = .04). Participants in the distraction condition experienced lower perceived exertion during exercise (p = .01). There were no condition differences in self-reported minutes exercised during follow-up, but participants in the mindfulness condition reported exercising for more days during the follow-up compared to the associative focus condition (p = .01).

These findings suggest individuals wishing to increase their cardiovascular exercise could engage in mindfulness or distraction in order to make exercise feel less difficult and/or more affectively pleasant.