Physical Activity

A Multi-disciplinary Introduction

Nick Draper, Gareth Stratton, Nick Draper, Gareth Stratton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781315523835
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Médecine
• Subtopic: Santé générale

Physical activity and its relationship to health is one of the great issues of our age. The causes of, and solutions to, physical inactivity are complex and multi-dimensional, and therefore the subject needs to be studied and understood from a variety of perspectives. This is the first textbook to provide a truly multi-disciplinary introduction to physical activity studies.

Offering a complete foundation to the subject, it covers the basics of every core discipline from biochemistry, public health and biomechanics to physiology, sport psychology and sociology. It introduces a full range of topics across the physical activity curriculum, including behaviour change, motor skill development, nutrition, exercise prescription, public health policy, and physical education, providing a well-balanced and international perspective on each important issue. There is also a strong emphasis throughout the book on the practical, applied dimensions of physical activity, including innovative approaches to promotion and intervention tailored to every age range and environment.

Physical Activity: A Multi-disciplinary Introduction is an indispensable companion to any course or degree programme with an emphasis on physical activity and health. A variety of exclusive eResources to aid teaching and learning are also available via the Routledge website.

Part I
Foundations in physical activity

1 Physical activity

A multi-disciplinary introduction

Nick Draper and Gareth Stratton

Keywords: Physical activity, exercise, physical fitness, multi-disciplinary, high-intensity interval training

Changes in the structure of society in many countries around the world, as well as the ongoing industrial and technological revolutions, have had a dramatic impact on the way we live our lives and our inherent daily physical activity. Unlike the hunter-gatherers of our past physical activity has been engineered out from many of our daily lives and is now something we have to find time to add into busy schedules. As is described in more detail in Chapter 3 (Historical aspects of physical activity) knowledge regarding the benefits of physical activity for health goes back at least as far as early Greek, Roman, Chinese and Indian civilisations. Yet despite this knowledge, a major health and economic concern facing many societies around the world is how to re-engineer physical activity, with all its associated health benefits, back into the everyday lives of increasingly technology-engaged populations.

As working definitions for the textbook we refer back to the work of Caspersen, Powell and Christenson (1985), who defined physical activity as “as any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that results in energy expenditure.” As such, physical activity includes activities such as recreation, active transport, movement during/as part of work, household activities and sports participation. They further defined exercise, as a sub-category of physical activity, as representing physical activity that is “planned, structured, repetitive, and purposive in the sense that improvement or maintenance of one or more components of physical fitness is an objective” and physical fitness as a set of “attributes that people have or achieve.”

Physical activity: A multi-disciplinary introduction brings together contributions from researchers across a wide range of sport and exercise science disciplines, along with public health specialists. The aim of the textbook is to examine the extent and direction of physical activity research and knowledge in each respective field. The textbook, as an introduction, is designed as a starting point in regard to physical activity knowledge development. In addition, however, it brings together research from across a range of disciplines and consequently provides an opportunity for researchers in any discipline to easily capture a flavour of physical activity research (and its counterpart, physical inactivity) outside their own specialisation. This is an important additional consideration, given the complex multi-factorial activates that have led to the global increases in physical inactivity and the consequential implications for individual health and wellbeing, as well as the economic costs to a nation.

While a vast range of physical activity knowledge and research will be highlighted in the chapters to follow, it is perhaps pertinent in this opening chapter, to highlight a number of foundational studies that have shaped, and will continue to shape, the direction of physical activity research in years to come. The first, which is referred to in several chapters in the textbook, is the series of studies published by Professor Jeremy Morris and colleagues (1953, 1958, 1973 etc.). In particular Morris et al.’s seminal work published in 1953, highlighted in Chapter 3, where the team importantly elucidated the role of physical activity in the reduction of coronary heart disease development for postal and bus workers.

The second relates to the work of one of the contributors to this textbook, Professor Neil Armstrong (Chapter 11, Paediatric physical activity and aerobic fitness). Beginning in the 1980s, Armstrong and colleagues examined physical activity levels and fitness in children. While highlighting low levels of habitual physical activity in his early work, Armstrong and co-workers – controversially at the time, but later confirmed in subsequent studies – suggested that habitual physical activity levels in UK secondary school children in the 1990s had stabilised, rather than continued to decline (Armstrong, Balding, Gentle & Kirby, 1990; Welsman & Armstrong, 2000).

The third relates to the series of papers published in 2012 by the Lancet Physical Activity Series Working Group in the Lancet. In respect of the impact on the medical profession this may represent a watershed in the understanding of the risk factors associated with, and health and economic costs of, physical inactivity. In these papers the rise in physical inactivity was referred to as a pandemic (Lee, Shiroma, Lobelo, Puska, Blair & Katzmarzyk, 2012). Three years prior to this Blair, one of the authors of these papers, referred to physical inactivity as the biggest public health issue of the 21st century. Furthermore, increasing awareness of the significance of physical inactivity as a mortality risk factor led Blair and co-workers to coin the term ‘smokadiabesity’ in relation to their finding mortality risk factors for a large cohort study in the US (Blair, 2009). In this paper Blair highlighted that physical inactivity was a more significant risk factor for mortality than smoking, diabetes and obesity put together.

While these important studies have developed our knowledge and understanding in the field, there remains much work to be done. A recent paper by Lewis and colleagues (2017) identified three key areas as future directions for physical activity research. These included focusing not only in increasing PA, but also on decreasing sedentary behaviour, the use of technology for understanding PA habits and changes through interventions, and the need for future research to maximise public health impact through changes in dissemination approaches. While we support these intentions the authors have perhaps missed a vital aspect in regard to physical activity, namely, that future research should take a multi-disciplinary approach. Given the causes of increased physical inactivity are multi-factorial, to develop the most informed interventions requires us as professionals to work in collaborative teams and create more far impactful solutions.

An example of the need to take such an approach can be found in regard to research relating to high intensity interval training (HIIT). As a physical activity promotion intervention for general population, HIIT has received an increasing research focus since the late 1990s. The rise in interest in this type of intervention arose primarily due to the potential time-saving benefits of HIIT.

In the early 2000s a number of studies highlighted the physiological adaptations that could be brought about through HIIT for young active males and clinical populations in a laboratory setting (Burgomaster et al., 2008; Tjonna et al., 2008; Wisloff et al., 2007; Gibala et al. 2006; Warburton, Nicol, & Bredin, 2006). At that stage though, there had not been a controlled trial investigating the potential of HIIT for inactive participants in the general population for a study conducted in a real-world setting. A 12-week intervention by Lunt and co-workers provided data for such a study (Lunt et al., 2014). The research conducted in New Zealand found that for the obese, previously inactive participants who took part in the study two different forms of HIIT (maximal volitional interval training and aerobic interval training) were non-inferior, in regard to cardiorespiratory improvements, to lower intensity endurance training (LIET), but in this real-world setting, benefits were modest in comparison to previous research.

As a consequence of these findings, Draper and co-workers developed a six-month real-world follow-up study investigating adherence to HIIT over a longer time period and with decreasing group support (activity/session leaders). From data to be published in 2018, Draper and co-workers found a number of key psychological factors that are of importance when planning physical activity interventions. Firstly, the six-month intervention, which began 12 weeks after the Lunt et al. (2014) study included 20 participants who had taken part in the earlier Lunt et al. study. Of these dual-study participants, despite being encouraged to continue activity between the two studies, virtually all of these previously inactive participants ceased physical activity. The dual-study participants waited until the next study to continue with their physical activity sessions.

Secondly, while in the Lunt et al. (2014) study each exercise group had two activity leaders throughout the 12-week study, during the Draper et al. follow-up intervention the level of support for participants was reduced through the duration of the study. In the first two months participants had three supported sessions in each week, in the second two months they received two supported sessions per week and in the final two months they received one supported session per week. The intention of the reducing support by group leaders was to (a) examine the adherence to the sessions with reduced support and (b) to prepare participants to being active independently at the end of the research period. In regard to the intervention, given the equality in benefits of the three previous intervention modalities (maximal volitional interval training and aerobic interval training and LIET) participants were required to complete one session of each exercise form each week, providing a total of three sessions per week which matched the intervention volume in the Lunt et al. (2014) study. Results of the study indicated that when given a choice participants avoided completing the maximal volitional intensity session (4 × 30 seconds all out efforts) when unsupported. The reason behind this was due to the motivation required to work at that intensity. While the session was more time efficient there was greater adherence to the lower intensity session and this lack of adherence outweighed the time-saving benefits of HIIT in this real-world context.

These findings from a real-world physical activity intervention highlight the need for multi-disciplinary interventions. While many conferences continue to host discipline-specific sessions, biochemists and physiologists are in one room developing knowledge as to the mechanisms behind why HIIT works as a time-saving intervention, while in another room psychologists are discussing why, due to adherence and motivational considerations, there are limitations to HIIT as a physical activity intervention with the general population. Never has the need for multi-disciplinary research interventions been ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• PART I Foundations in physical activity
• PART II Sport science disciplines and physical activity
• PART III Applied physical activity
• Appendix: figure 8.1
• Notes on contributors
• Index