Affective Responses To Identical Resistance Exercises That Are Prescribed Or Self-selected

Allowing individuals to self-select their aerobic exercises has been shown to increase enjoyment, but less is known on how self-selecting resistance exercise impacts enjoyment, which is an important consideration for long-term adherence. PURPOSE: To assess whether the self-selection of resistance exercises increases enjoyment and results in sufficient effort expected to increase muscle size and strength. METHODS: Individuals came to the laboratory for three sessions of knee extensions each separated by seven days. During the first session, individuals were instructed to self-select the exercise load, number of repetitions, and the rest period between sets. The second session was designed to determine how many repetitions individuals could perform at their self-selected load, and to vary the exercise loads to reduce the likelihood that individuals could recall what they self-selected on visit 1. The third session involved completing the same exercise that was performed on session 1 (unbeknownst to them), except the individuals were prescribed the exercise. At the conclusion of each set, individuals were asked to rate their exercise induced feelings, felt arousal, and discomfort. RESULTS: A total of 27 individuals (17 males, 10 females) completed the study. On average, individuals exercised 2.8 (5.9) repetitions short of volitional task failure, which corresponded to performing 88.3 (28.5) % of the repetitions that could have been completed with the self-selected load. The self-selected exercise session resulted in greater affective responses (2.6 vs. 1.9; BF10 = 10.516), felt arousal (3.6 vs. 3.1; BF10 = 89.157), and discomfort (3.7 vs. 2.8; BF10 = 20.350) as compared to the prescribed exercise session. CONCLUSION: When individuals were allowed to choose their resistance exercises, most chose to exercise close to volitional failure using protocols likely to increase muscle size and strength. Allowing individuals to self-select their resistance exercise protocols increased enjoyment, which may help to increase long-term adherence. Previous research demonstrating no difference in affective responses between self-selected and prescribed resistance exercise may have failed to detect differences given that the protocols performed were not matched at the individual level.