Latest news with #Ronca
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Matching your workouts to your personality could give you better results
Matching your workouts to your personality could give you better results, according to researchers. For example, people who tend to be more introverted and negative may need frequent breaks and a private workout, while those who are more extroverted can reap the benefits of team sports and high-intensity classes, such as Barry's Bootcamp or SoulCycle. People who are more open have been found to engage in exercise regardless of whether or not they enjoyed it. 'Our brains are wired in different ways, which drives our behaviors and how we interact with our environment,' Dr. Flaminia Ronca, of University College London's Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health, explained in a statement. 'So it's not surprising that personality would also influence how we respond to different intensities of exercise.' In the U.S., that may spur rising obesity rates. One in five children and two in five adults are affected by the chronic condition, leaving them at higher risk of many diseases. In 2020, just over 24 percent of U.S. adults met the 2018 national physical activity guidelines. A new analysis from children's health centers in Philadelphia and Los Angeles found that the health of American kids deteriorated across a broad spectrum of indicators between 2007 and 2023. To reach these conclusions, Ronca and her co-authors studied the behaviors of 86 participants in the U.K. They tested their baseline fitness in a lab before splitting them into two groups. One group was instructed to undertake an eight-week home fitness plan of cycling and strength training, and another continued their usual lifestyle. All participants filled out a questionnaire regarding how much they had enjoyed their participation in the study. The researchers particularly examined five personality traits - extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness. 'Understanding personality factors in designing and recommending physical activity programs is likely to be very important in determining how successful a program is, and whether people will stick with it and become fitter,' senior author Prof Paul Burgess, from the university's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said in a statement. They noted that the relationship between stress levels and change in fitness, finding that stress levels of both groups were similar before the study. After undergoing the home fitness plan, people who tended to be more neurotic exhibited a strong reduction in their stress levels. A survey from researchers in Ohio earlier this year found that 45 percent of U.S. adults are stressed at least once a week due to the news and social media, and that 16 percent of those respondents reported feeling stressed every day. Furthermore, workplace stress has been reported to cause 120,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 'It's fantastic news, as it highlights that those who benefit the most from a reduction in stress respond very well to exercise,' Ronca said. Previous research from the University of Missouri has shown a correlation between personality and physical function. 'We hope that if people can find physical activities that they enjoy they will more readily choose to do them,' Burgess added. The results were published on Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Matching your workouts to your personality could give you better results
Matching your workouts to your personality could give you better results, according to researchers. For example, people who tend to be more introverted and negative may need frequent breaks and a private workout, while those who are more extroverted can reap the benefits of team sports and high-intensity classes, such as Barry's Bootcamp or SoulCycle. People who are more open have been found to engage in exercise regardless of whether or not they enjoyed it. 'Our brains are wired in different ways, which drives our behaviors and how we interact with our environment,' Dr. Flaminia Ronca, of University College London's Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health, explained in a statement. 'So it's not surprising that personality would also influence how we respond to different intensities of exercise.' In the U.S., that may spur rising obesity rates. One in five children and two in five adults are affected by the chronic condition, leaving them at higher risk of many diseases. In 2020, just over 24 percent of U.S. adults met the 2018 national physical activity guidelines. A new analysis from children's health centers in Philadelphia and Los Angeles found that the health of American kids deteriorated across a broad spectrum of indicators between 2007 and 2023. To reach these conclusions, Ronca and her co-authors studied the behaviors of 86 participants in the U.K. They tested their baseline fitness in a lab before splitting them into two groups. One group was instructed to undertake an eight-week home fitness plan of cycling and strength training, and another continued their usual lifestyle. All participants filled out a questionnaire regarding how much they had enjoyed their participation in the study. The researchers particularly examined five personality traits - extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness. 'Understanding personality factors in designing and recommending physical activity programs is likely to be very important in determining how successful a program is, and whether people will stick with it and become fitter,' senior author Prof Paul Burgess, from the university's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said in a statement. They noted that the relationship between stress levels and change in fitness, finding that stress levels of both groups were similar before the study. After undergoing the home fitness plan, people who tended to be more neurotic exhibited a strong reduction in their stress levels. A survey from researchers in Ohio earlier this year found that 45 percent of U.S. adults are stressed at least once a week due to the news and social media, and that 16 percent of those respondents reported feeling stressed every day. Furthermore, workplace stress has been reported to cause 120,000 deaths in the U.S. each year, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 'It's fantastic news, as it highlights that those who benefit the most from a reduction in stress respond very well to exercise,' Ronca said. Previous research from the University of Missouri has shown a correlation between personality and physical function. 'We hope that if people can find physical activities that they enjoy they will more readily choose to do them,' Burgess added. The results were published on Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Matching your workouts to your personality could make exercise more enjoyable and give better results
Making exercise fun is the holy grail for many people who can't quite find the motivation to work out. But rather than forcing yourself to enjoy running or that gym class you once attended, the solution may lie in something more straightforward — simply matching a workout to your personality type, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Psychology. That's because people with different personality traits enjoy different types of exercise, the study found. More extroverted people, for example, prefer high-intensity training sessions with others, such as team sports, while people who scored highly on 'neuroticism,' a metric that measures someone's emotional instability, preferred private workouts without people watching them and punctuated by short breaks. As for those who scored highly on conscientiousness, they 'were more likely to have a well-rounded fitness … and we think that's because conscientious individuals are more likely to be driven by the fact that exercise is good for them,' said the study's co-lead author, Flaminia Ronca, an associate professor in exercise science at University College London. 'Personality determines which intensities and forms of exercises we're attracted to. … If we can understand that, then we can make that first step in engagement and exercise in sedentary individuals,' she told CNN. These findings have important implications for encouraging more people to exercise, especially since just 22.5% of adults and 19% of adolescents worldwide manage the World Health Organization-recommended 150 minutes of physical activity per week, according to the study. By focusing on personality types, health care providers may be able to offer a 'more personalized approach to exercise,' said Angelina Sutin, a professor at Florida State University who specializes in investigating links between personality and health, and who wasn't involved in the study. 'Typically … we tell people to exercise and just say: 'We know high-intensity interval training is good for you, so you should do it,'' she said. 'But for people high in neuroticism, they're not going to do it, and we also know that low-intensity exercise can be beneficial too. Knowing that somebody is high in neuroticism, recommending that kind of exercise, maybe people will be more likely to engage in it.' It is also important to note that personality traits interact with each other, Ronca added. Some people score highly on both neuroticism and conscientiousness, meaning that although they may find exercise anxiety-inducing, they are much more likely to do it since they know it is good for them, she said. To reach their findings, Ronca and her colleagues in London first directed the 132 study participants, aged between 25 and 51 years old, to complete a questionnaire revealing their personality traits. The study employed a commonly used model that conceptualizes someone's personality through five traits — extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, openness and conscientiousness. 'Personality traits … they're just descriptions of the way people behave in certain situations,' Paul Burgess, a professor of neuroscience at UCL who co-led the study, told CNN. 'And the way that people behave in certain situations is determined to a large degree by their brain capabilities, what they notice, what they pay attention to, what they can remember, how fast they can react.' The researchers then ran fitness tests on the participants and randomly sorted them into two groups. One group was given an eight-week cycling and strength plan, while the control group did 10 minutes a week of stretching exercises. Of the original 132 participants, 86 completed both pre- and post-testing either side of these eight weeks. The study team found that, although fitness improved across all personality types for those who completed the cycling and strength program, there was a marked difference in enjoyment of the exercises. More extroverted people enjoyed the higher-intensity lab fitness tests, while more 'neurotic' people enjoyed the home-based light-intensity sessions. Personality traits also informed how exercise influenced someone's stress levels. People who scored highly in neuroticism had a significant reduction in self-reported stress, much more than in any other group, the study found. 'Those who would benefit the most from a stress reduction are the ones who actually showed a decrease in stress following those eight weeks of exercise,' Ronca said. 'And I think that's quite a powerful message to give.' Given the many benefits of exercise, including stress reduction, both Ronca and Burgess hope their findings encourage people to find alternative ways of exercise outside the more traditional workouts they might dislike. 'There's a danger, perhaps, that the focus becomes … competitive sports and serious engagement at a time when young people are starting to have lots more demands on them,' Burgess said. 'There are a lot of personalities that don't respond well to that kind of situation, that find it quite stressful.' Sign up for CNN's Fitness, But Better newsletter series. Our seven-part guide will help you ease into a healthy routine, backed by experts.
South Wales Guardian
08-07-2025
- Health
- South Wales Guardian
Personality type could influence what workouts people prefer
The link could potentially help those who try to be more active but struggle to make long-term changes to find something they enjoy, researchers said. For the study, experts from University College London (UCL) gave 132 volunteers either an eight-week cycling and strength training plan or told them to rest. Strength levels were evaluated before the start of the research using exercises like press ups and a cycling tests, while stress levels were measured on a scale of one to 10. Researchers used the Big 5 personality test to assess dominant personality traits using five distinct groups. These are extroversion, or how energetic and outgoing a person is, agreeableness, which includes attributes related to trust and compassion, conscientiousness, which reflects traits like orderliness and and reliability. The other two traits are neuroticism, which measures emotional stability and the tendency for anxiety or mood swings, and openness, which describes a person's willingness to try new experiences. Dr Flaminia Ronca, of UCL's surgery and interventional science and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health (ISEH), said: 'We found some clear links between personality traits and the type of exercise the participants enjoyed most, which I think is important because we could potentially use this knowledge to tailor physical activity recommendations to the individual – and hopefully help them to become and remain more active.' Of the group, some 86 people completed the programme. Researchers found extroverts tended to enjoy high intensity workouts, such as high intensity interval training (HIIT). Elsewhere, those with strong neuroticism traits preferred bursts of activity over prolonged intensity. They also preferred not being monitored or recording their heart rate during the study, which researchers suggest could indicated they prefer being given space and independence while exercising. Dr Ronca added: 'We know that the global population is becoming increasingly sedentary. 'You often hear about people trying to become more active, but struggling to make lasting changes. 'In this study, we wanted to understand how personality can influence this to support the development of effective interventions for changes in health behaviour.' Professor Paul Burgess, from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: 'We found that people who scored more highly in the neuroticism personality trait showed a particularly strong reduction in stress when they undertook the fitness training recommended in the study. 'This suggests that there may be particular benefits in stress reduction for those with this trait.'
Irish Independent
08-07-2025
- Health
- Irish Independent
Personality type could influence what workouts people prefer
The link could potentially help those who try to be more active but struggle to make long-term changes to find something they enjoy, researchers said. For the study, experts from University College London (UCL) gave 132 volunteers either an eight-week cycling and strength training plan or told them to rest. Strength levels were evaluated before the start of the research using exercises like press ups and a cycling tests, while stress levels were measured on a scale of one to 10. Researchers used the Big 5 personality test to assess dominant personality traits using five distinct groups. These are extroversion, or how energetic and outgoing a person is, agreeableness, which includes attributes related to trust and compassion, conscientiousness, which reflects traits like orderliness and and reliability. The other two traits are neuroticism, which measures emotional stability and the tendency for anxiety or mood swings, and openness, which describes a person's willingness to try new experiences. Dr Flaminia Ronca, of UCL's surgery and interventional science and the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health (ISEH), said: 'We found some clear links between personality traits and the type of exercise the participants enjoyed most, which I think is important because we could potentially use this knowledge to tailor physical activity recommendations to the individual – and hopefully help them to become and remain more active.' Of the group, some 86 people completed the programme. Researchers found extroverts tended to enjoy high intensity workouts, such as high intensity interval training (HIIT). Elsewhere, those with strong neuroticism traits preferred bursts of activity over prolonged intensity. They also preferred not being monitored or recording their heart rate during the study, which researchers suggest could indicated they prefer being given space and independence while exercising. Dr Ronca added: 'We know that the global population is becoming increasingly sedentary. 'You often hear about people trying to become more active, but struggling to make lasting changes. 'In this study, we wanted to understand how personality can influence this to support the development of effective interventions for changes in health behaviour.' Professor Paul Burgess, from the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: 'We found that people who scored more highly in the neuroticism personality trait showed a particularly strong reduction in stress when they undertook the fitness training recommended in the study. 'This suggests that there may be particular benefits in stress reduction for those with this trait.'
