Goal Setting: Planning and Execution

Transformation:

How to Take Them from Sedentary to Active

By Wayne L. Westcott, PhD

You’re the magician who can make the difference. The magic words? Awareness, attention and achievement.

Of course, you will want to use your own creativity and special interests, as well as the unique characteristics of your market, to build the right kind of programming for the inactive population in your area. However, there are basic elements you can use as a foundation to create a strong, successful program.

To help you integrate components that will ensure an effective class or program, I am going to outline fundamentals learned form over a decade of experience designing exercise programs specifically for the average sedentary adult.

At the South Shore YMCA in Boston, we train as many as 500 formerly inactive adults in a year. Our participants respond well to a basic training program (20 to 25 minutes of strength exercise and 20 to 25 minutes of endurance exercise three days a week), using standard training principles. We incorporate several educational and motivational teaching techniques to enhance member satisfaction and adherence.

After an eight-week training program, participants complete an anonymous, written questionnaire regarding their exercise experiences. The average rating has been 4.9 out of 5.0. Although some individuals drop out, about 95 percent of those who finish the program continue to exercise on a regular basis. In our experience, eight weeks of carefully designed exercise is sufficient to change the lifestyle patterns of previously sedentary adults.

HOW YOU CAN DO IT

To develop your program, you need to concentrate on three key aspects: motivational approach, exercise methods and teaching methods. I will begin by briefly describing our approach to motivation, then discuss endurance and strength training exercise methods and, finally, offer tips on successful teaching methods. While I will speak from my experience with one kind of program, keep in mind that you are free to take these ideas and create your own unique offering.

1, 2, 3…. GET MOTIVATED

At South Shore YMCA, we use the “awareness, attention, achievement” approach to get and keep our new exercisers. You can probably come up with your own strategies for making this three-step approach work, but the following ideas have worked for us.

STEP ONE: EXERCISE AWARENESS

To us, this means, “Get the word out!” To introduce the benefits of exercise to people in our surrounding communities, we use television segments; radio shows; business newsletters; and presentations at schools, hospitals, churches, senior centers and service clubs. However, our regular “Keeping Fit” newspaper column—presently in its 10^th year—is far and away our most effective tool for reaching and teaching the sedentary population.

The majority of our weekly exercise articles are directed toward the inactive market, including youth, adults, seniors, overweight persons and weekend athletes (golfers, skiers, etc). Each article presents about 700 to 800 words of basic exercise information, typically emphasizing training benefits, principles and options for nonexercising individuals.

STEP TWO: EXERCISE ATTENTION

Awareness is a good starting point, but it is rarely sufficient in itself.  Unfortunately, most nonexercisers have difficulty sticking with a home-based exercise program. They purchase equipment and learn how to use it, but they seldom adhere to a regular workout schedule on their own.

Those who try a commercial health club are likely to be intimidated by better-conditioned exercise enthusiasts, who tend to dominate typical fitness centers. This appears true for males and females, young and old. People quickly get the impression they are too unfit to be seen in a fitness facility!

For these reasons, we have tried to develop more homogeneous exercise programs in less threatening exercise environments with attentive exercise instructors. We have found that people who perceive themselves as unfit prefer to train with similar individuals in small, closely supervised classes. Our fitness programs are more likely to fill up when we offer specific classes for specific groups. Examples include exercise programs designed for:

• Preteens

• Teens

• Adults

•  Seniors

• Overweight persons

• Golfers

• Skiers

• Runners

We have provided these programs in our large (4,000-square foot) research room. Without question, unfit participants feel much more comfortable in the small training center, which is limited to class members. We can run our small, homogenous exercise classes all day long in the research center.

We take a personal approach with each new exercise group, beginning with an orientation slide show and an informative tour through our fitness testing and training facilities. We then offer individuals fitness assessments, followed by careful instruction on the strength and endurance equipment.

After trying various student-teacher ratios, we have settled on four-person classes with one attentive instructor. During the first few training sessions, we try to provide one-to-one instructions. Once the class is comfortable with our exercise environment, we cut back to one instructor for four people.

Each class is scheduled for one hour, with about 20 to 25 minutes of strength exercise and 20 to 25 minutes of endurance exercise. Typically, two individuals strength train while the other two endurance train. Due to the small dimensions of the research center, one instructor can attend sufficiently to each participant without appearing overbearing.

STEP THREE: EXECISE ACHIEVEMENT

While some people frequent the exercise facility primarily to interact socially, very few formerly inactive adults continue a regular exercise program unless they are achieving their desired results. In general, our program participants want to look, feel and function better. Specifically, they want to improve muscular strength, as evidenced by training with heavier weight loads on the Nautilus machines, and increase cardiovascular endurance, as demonstrated by completing longer exercise bouts on the treadmill and cycles.

We typically see a 12-pound improvement in body composition (three pounds more muscle and nine pounds less fat) over the two-month training period.

We take a two-pronged approach to achieving our participation objectives. The first relates to exercise methods, and the second to teaching methods. Both are of utmost importance when working with unfit individuals.

Part 2 of this 3 part article will appear in the next FitBits!

Wayne L. Westcott, Ph.D., is fitness and research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts, and a strength training consultant to several professional organizations.  He is the author of the college textbook Strength Fitness, as well as several other fitness and exercise books.

Click here for books by Dr. Westcott