Levels of Susceptibility to Exercise Dependence and Mood States in Street Runners

The regular practice of physical exercise is often associated with promoting benefits for practitioners. In recent decades, street running has become popular worldwide, with most participants being recreational runners who engage in the activity primarily to promote health, well-being, leisure, and quality of life, although some also participate with competitive goals. Among the psychological aspects related to exercise, studies have shown that some individuals may become susceptible to "exercise dependence," a condition in which exercise takes a central role in a person's life. As a result, individuals may exhibit characteristics such as excessive training, injuries; weight control issues, withdrawal symptoms when unable to exercise and even problems in social relationships when exercise is exclusively prioritized.

The aim of this study was to investigate and analyze levels of susceptibility to running dependence and its relationship with exercise volume and mood states (tension, depression, anger, vigor, fatigue, and mental confusion).

This was a quantitative cross-sectional study involving 761 regular Brazilian runners (59.8% male and 40.2% female) who consented to participate and answered the Sociodemographic Questionnaire, the Escala de Dependência de Corrida (EDC), a Brazilian Portuguese adaptation of the Negative Addiction Scale (NAS), and the Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS). The analysis plan was conducted through descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, median, 1st and 3rd quartiles, interquartile range, and 95% confidence intervals) and inferential statistics (Spearman's Correlation and Kruskal-Wallis Test). In all tests, the significance level adopted was p < 0.05.

The sample was divided into three groups of susceptibility to exercise dependence: low (37.6%), moderate (36.4%), and high (26%). Scores indicative of greater susceptibility to exercise dependence showed positive correlations with running practice volume (years of experience, weekly training frequency, weekly training duration, and weekly mileage), as well as with vigor. Although a statistically significant correlation was also observed for tension, its magnitude was trivial (rs = 0.080). Comparisons using the Kruskal-Wallis test showed that higher susceptibility levels were associated with greater running volumes and higher raw vigor scores, whereas no significant group differences were observed for the remaining mood states.

Higher susceptibility to exercise dependence was associated with greater running volume and higher raw vigor scores. No consistent associations were observed with negative mood states, except for a trivial correlation with tension. These findings suggest that greater susceptibility to exercise dependence among runners was primarily associated with higher raw vigor scores rather than with broader alterations in mood states.