Aplicación de un programa de ejercicio físico para optimizar la motivación y los hábitos saludables en los adultos

Abstract

Physical activity and proper eating habits are essential to develop healthy life styles in the subjects. The objective of our research was to improve the life style variables that highlight adult and elderly people´s health through a physical activity programme with nutritional education and promotion of the intrinsic motivation, using the Self Determination Theory and the Transtheoretical model of behaviour change in the physical activity. To do so, the sample used consisted of 135 women between the ages of 40 and 88 (59.66±10.76), who were participating in a physical functional maintenance programme. A quasi-experimental study was developed with a factorial design of 2x2 with a counter-balance of the treatments and the control group, which allowed for the subjects to be compared in different moments of the research in order to assess the impact of the independent variables (physical activity programme with nutritional education and the physical activity exercise with the promotion of intrinsic motivation) on the dependent variables (motivation, basic psychological needs, physical activity states, eating habits and physical fitness functional test). The most relevant results lead us to conclude that there is an improvement in the experimental groups 1 and 2 regarding to the control group in the variables, intrinsic regulation (F1,134=17.95; p<.01; n2=.21), identified regulation (F1,134= 21.5; p<.01; n2=.25) introjected regulation (F1,134= 21.39; p?.01; n2=.25) external regulation (F1,134= 11.89; p<.01; n2=.15) autonomy (F1,134= 29.93; p<.01; n2=.31) competence (F1,134= 29.35; p<.01; ?2=.31), and eating habits (F1,134= 41.66; p<.01; n2=.39) after the application of the intervention programmes. We come to the conclusion that both application programmes were successful in the participants of our project. Therefore, it is vital to promote these intervention programmes during the physical functional maintenance classes, as they encourage habits of an healthy life style among its participants.