the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

Cardiovascular diseases are one of the leading causes of death among OECD countries. (OECD, 2015) More than half of the adult population is overweight, 18% are even obese (OECD, 2014) and 85 million have diabetes (OECD, 2015). From an etiological standpoint, lack of exercise is one of the main causes of the rise of these diseases. (Booth, Roberts, & Laye, 2012) Multiple studies point to the efficacy of exercise: For example, regular exercise has a positive impact on the health of the cardiovascular system (Shiroma & Lee, 2010), positively influences our mental wellbeing (Abu-Omar, Rütten, & Lehtinen, 2004) and positively affects the so called executive functions of our brain (Hillman, Erickson, & Kramer, 2008). Summarizing, there are multiple reasons to take up regular exercise, but still many people choose not to do so. (World Health Organization, 2014)

Two approaches on how to motivate people to take up regular exercise can be found in the field of Health Promotion. (Rütten & Abu-Omar, 2004) Either whole groups (for example the population of a country) are targeted with mass campaigns or singular persons are addressed in individual interventions, e.g. in some form of therapy. The efficacy of mass targeted campaigns is questionable. (Rütten & Abu-Omar, 2004) Most often these kinds of campaigns try to educate people on why exercise is good for us, but in most instances the problem is not that people do not know this fact.