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Wisdom Wednesdays: New research shows your personality type has a big impact on your fitness - and exercise preference. · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

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  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Just
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  Speaker 1: before we get into the subject of this week's podcast,
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  Speaker 1: I just want to ask a quick fever from you.
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  Speaker 1: If you're enjoying the podcast, and please hit that subscribe
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  Speaker 1: button on whatever your favorite podcast player is, because, believe
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  Speaker 1: it or not, it actually has a huge impact on
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  Speaker 1: growing the podcast and helping me to continue to bring
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  Speaker 1: content to you. Now, the other thing that really helps
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  Speaker 1: as well is sharing episodes, And if you're going to
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  Speaker 1: share any episode, this week's one is the one to
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  Speaker 1: share with anybody who you know that is interested in exercise,
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  Speaker 1: wants to do more exercise, or start an exercise program,
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  Speaker 1: or actually works in the allied health industry, because it
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  Speaker 1: is an absolute cracker on exercise and personality. So let's
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  Speaker 1: get on with the episode. Today, we're going to dive
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  Speaker 1: into something that straddles too particular passions of mind, psychology,
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  Speaker 1: and exercise science. Now you have heard me talk a
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  Speaker 1: lot about how critical movement is for both physical and
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  Speaker 1: mental health. But here's a new angle. What if your
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  Speaker 1: personality could predict not only how fit you are, but
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  Speaker 1: what types of exercise you'll enjoy most and even how
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  Speaker 1: much stress relief you'll get from it. Well, a fascinating
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  Speaker 1: new study out of University College London has just been
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  Speaker 1: published in Frontiers in Psychology, and it explores exactly that
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  Speaker 1: The researchers set out to answer three core questions. First,
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  Speaker 1: they wanted to know can personality predict be a sline fitness? Second,
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  Speaker 1: doesn't influence how much people enjoy different kinds of exercise?
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  Speaker 1: And third does personality in fact how much benefit people
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  Speaker 1: get both physically and mentally from a structured training program.
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  Speaker 1: Now this wasn't just a lab study with elite athletes,
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  Speaker 1: it was a real world study. The team recruited over
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  Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty adults from diverse backgrounds, including university students,
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  Speaker 1: emergency service workers, and other professionals, and they did it
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  Speaker 1: through email and social media, so the net was cast
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  Speaker 1: pretty wide in terms of diversity of participants, which is
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  Speaker 1: often not what you see in studies. And they screened
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  Speaker 1: them for injuries and health issues and then ended up
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  Speaker 1: with eighty six participants who completed the full eight week study.
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  Speaker 1: So let's break down what they actually did. Before any
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  Speaker 1: training began, participants filled out what's called the Big five inventory.
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  Speaker 1: This is probably the most well established and sophisticated personality
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  Speaker 1: measure and scores people on the Big five. Then it's
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  Speaker 1: called the Big five. The Big five are extraversion slash introversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism,
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  Speaker 1: and openness. And they also completed a validated perceived stress skill,
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  Speaker 1: the same scale that I just used in my PhD.
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  Speaker 1: And then they were brought into the lab for fitness testing,
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  Speaker 1: which included doing VO two max assessments for cardiovascular fitness,
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  Speaker 1: body composition measurements, and strength tests such as push ups, planks,
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  Speaker 1: and counter movement jumps. Interestingly, everyone raated their enjoyment of
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  Speaker 1: each session on a one to seven scale. Now after testing,
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  Speaker 1: then the participants were organized into groups or categories around
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  Speaker 1: their aids, their sex, their body mass index, and their
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  Speaker 1: baseline fitness. And then they were randomized into two groups.
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  Speaker 1: So these two groups were pretty well matched. One was
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  Speaker 1: a training intervention and the other was a control group
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  Speaker 1: in any good study, and those in the control group
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  Speaker 1: maintained their normal lifestyle but also added ten minute stretching
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  Speaker 1: routines each week to maintain a minimal level of engagement
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  Speaker 1: in the study. And the intervention group, however, followed an
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  Speaker 1: eight week home based exercise program that included three different
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  Speaker 1: styles of cycling, and those styles were low intensity cycling,
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  Speaker 1: threshold training, and hit high intensity interval training. Plus they
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  Speaker 1: also did one strength training session a week. And here's
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  Speaker 1: where it gets interesting. The workouts were personalized using heart
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  Speaker 1: rate zones calculated from each participant's VO two peak test,
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  Speaker 1: so it wasn't a one size fits all approach. It
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  Speaker 1: was very very tailored, and each cycling session had specific
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  Speaker 1: physiological targets, so zone two, which I've often talked about
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  Speaker 1: for those easy long rides, and in the higher zones
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  Speaker 1: for threshold and hit sessions. And the strength work used
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  Speaker 1: body weight movements like squats, lunges, press ups, glut bridges,
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  Speaker 1: and was scaled based on how hard participants actually perceived
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  Speaker 1: the effort. So this was a beautifully designed study where
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  Speaker 1: the intervention was actually personalized so that everybody was getting
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  Speaker 1: the same kind of intensity independent of their fitness levels.
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  Speaker 1: So it's a great example of an accessible but smartly
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  Speaker 1: structured training program. So what did they find. Well, let's
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  Speaker 1: start with their baseline fitness. It turns out that the
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  Speaker 1: Big Five measure of conscientiousness, which is a kind of
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  Speaker 1: a tendency to be responsible, hard working, organized, and goal orientated.
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  Speaker 1: These guys are The level of their conscientiousness predicted better
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  Speaker 1: all round fitness. They did more weekly exercise, they had
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  Speaker 1: lower body fat, and they had better performance and strength,
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  Speaker 1: So that's not surprising given what conscientiousness lends itself to. Now,
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  Speaker 1: extraversion was linked to higher cardiovascular capacity, while neuroticism was
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  Speaker 1: tied to poorer heart rate recovery, which I don't find
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  Speaker 1: surprising at all. People who are neurotic are much more
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  Speaker 1: likely to have anxiety and be easily stressed, and that
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  Speaker 1: suggests that they were less efficient or had less efficient
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  Speaker 1: recovery after intense effort. Now, interestingly, agreeableness and openness didn't
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  Speaker 1: predict basline fitness at all. The only ones that had
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  Speaker 1: an impact were conscientiousness, extraversion, and neuroticism. But the real
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  Speaker 1: interesting thing here was how the personality actually affected enjoyment.
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  Speaker 1: People high an extraversion enjoyed the high intensity VO two
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  Speaker 1: max and HIT sessions those all artwork arts where you
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  Speaker 1: leave everything on the back are on the mat. Now
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  Speaker 1: on the flip side, those with higher levels of neuroticism
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  Speaker 1: found the moderate threshold training sessions and even the low
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  Speaker 1: intensity rides less enjoyable, so they obviously didn't like the
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  Speaker 1: stress of exercise. And yet this is really worth pausing on.
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  Speaker 1: People with high neuroticism reported the biggest reduction in stress
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  Speaker 1: after the training program. Right, So the big takeaway here
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  Speaker 1: is you don't have to really enjoy the process to
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  Speaker 1: benefit from it, especially when it comes to mental health,
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  Speaker 1: and people who are hiring neuroticism are more prone to
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  Speaker 1: mental health issues, so that whilst they don't seem to
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  Speaker 1: enjoy exercise, they are the ones that benefit the most
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  Speaker 1: from it. Now, moving on to your agreeableness, that predicted
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  Speaker 1: enjoyment of the easier steady state sessions sorry the zone
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  Speaker 1: two long slow rides, while openness surprisingly predicted lower enjoyment
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  Speaker 1: of the threshold which is higher intensity and then the
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  Speaker 1: hit which is the super intensity in and out of
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  Speaker 1: big intensities. And then conscientious participants, despite being fitter, didn't
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  Speaker 1: necessarily enjoy the workouts more. In fact, they actually showed
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  Speaker 1: smaller gains in peak par possibly because the intervention may
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  Speaker 1: have been less demanding than their usual routine. So these guys,
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  Speaker 1: because they're conscientious, may have been stricter around their exercise,
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  Speaker 1: so they didn't benefit as much from the program. Now
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  Speaker 1: when it came to adherence and consistency, which are really critical,
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  Speaker 1: probably the most critical things in long term exercise program,
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  Speaker 1: this is where things get even more interesting. Neurotic participants
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  Speaker 1: were less likely to upload their heart rate data consistently,
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  Speaker 1: not because they weren't exercising, but likely, the researchers think,
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  Speaker 1: because they were more anxious or hesitant about being monitored. Meanwhile,
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  Speaker 1: the extroverts, despite being very enthusiastic, were ironically less likely
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  Speaker 1: to show up for their post study testing, a reminder
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  Speaker 1: that enthusiasm and follow up don't always go hand in hand.
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  Speaker 1: But what about real results? So the intervention group, compared
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  Speaker 1: to the control group, they showed clear measurable improvements across
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  Speaker 1: multiple markers. Their VO two max, their strength, their endurance,
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  Speaker 1: and exercise duration all improved significantly. Even better, these gains
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  Speaker 1: were consistent regardless of personality, meaning that everybody got something
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  Speaker 1: out of it, just some got more out of it.
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  Speaker 1: But those changes in perceived stress with a cherry on top.
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  Speaker 1: The people with the highest levels of neuroticism, the people
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  Speaker 1: who found the workout's harder to enjoy and tend to
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  Speaker 1: get more stressed in life, they experience the biggest reductions
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  Speaker 1: in stress. So this tells us something powerful that structured
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  Speaker 1: exercise may be particularly therapeutic for those who struggle with
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  Speaker 1: anxiety or stress, even if they don't feel amazing while
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  Speaker 1: doing it. And I've said this for a long long
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  Speaker 1: time that particularly anxious people will benefit most from exercise
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  Speaker 1: because it trains them to deal with the physiological feelings
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  Speaker 1: of stress. So what's the take comes? Firstly, if you're
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  Speaker 1: someone that's trying to build a more consistent workout habit,
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  Speaker 1: knowing your personality can help tailor the process, and you
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  Speaker 1: can actually do a free Big five test online and
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  Speaker 1: I will stick a link into that free assessment into
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  Speaker 1: the show notes. Now, if you're extroverted, you might thrive
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  Speaker 1: or might lean towards high intensity classes or team workouts
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  Speaker 1: where you're interacting with other people. If you're more agreeable
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  Speaker 1: or conscientiousness or conscientious sorry, a consistent plan with progress
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  Speaker 1: tracking might suit you really well. And if you're high
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  Speaker 1: in eu auticism, don't be discouraged by low enjoyment at first.
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  Speaker 1: It's really about sticking with it because you are the people.
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  Speaker 1: Whether stress relief is the biggest and then for coaches
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  Speaker 1: and trainers out there, this is an absolute goal mine
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  Speaker 1: of information. Understanding your client's personality can help you to
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  Speaker 1: personalize their plan, not just to maximize physical results, but
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  Speaker 1: to boost enjoyment and to reduce their stress, which we
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  Speaker 1: all know are key for long term adherence. And finally,
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  Speaker 1: if you've ever struggled with sticking to a workout routine,
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  Speaker 1: it might not be a matter of willpart it might
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  Speaker 1: be a matter of fit for your personality. Finding the
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  Speaker 1: right type and intensity of exercise for your personality and
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  Speaker 1: the situation and could be the game changer that you've
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  Speaker 1: been looking for. So, folks, that is it for this week.
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  Speaker 1: Hopefully that gives you some good food for thought around exercise.
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  Speaker 1: And please, if you know someone who's struggling with exercise
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  Speaker 1: or wanting to increase their exercise, then please share this
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  Speaker 1: with them. If you know somebody who's in the fitness industry,
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  Speaker 1: then share this with them because it will help them
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  Speaker 1: to be more effective in helping their clients. That's it
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  Speaker 1: for this week, folks, catch you next time.