運動実践者が一時的運動停止に導かれるハイリスク状況とその対処の評価

抄録

The Relapse Prevention Model (RPM) has provided a framework for successful long-term maintenance of some types of health behavior. The purpose of this study was to identify high-risk situations for inducing exercise slip and lapse, which may lead to real relapse, and to clarify the coping strategies in this regard for Japanese regular exercisers, from the viewpoint of the RPM. We examined 677 regular exercisers by obtaining open-ended responses about 1) their typical high-risk situations as immediate determinants interfering with their planned exercise, 2) their coping responses to those situations, and 3) subsequent patterns of exercise outcome. High-risk situations included fatigue, bad weather, bad conditioning or injury, work or academic obligation, troubles in personal life, interpersonal relationships, and getting into a groove, although the frequency orders differed according to gender. Females were more aware that interpersonal relationships were associated with a higher incidence of exercise slip and lapse than did males, whereas males identified fatigue as the highest risk. Positive coping strategies as problem solving and behavior strategies as execution of routine work were most commonly employed, and were associated with positive exercise outcome for both females and males. On the other hand, the usage of negative coping strategies tended to lead to slip and lapse. These results suggest that adoption of coping strategies regarding high-risk situations is associated with exercise outcome, although the effects differ between males and females. These data demonstrate the importance of coping ability or strategy for exercise and suggest that slip and lapse may result from ineffective coping with high-risk situations. These findings confirm and extend previous work on the application of the RPM for examining exercise slip and lapse. Measurement issues and knowledge derived from this study are discussed in relation to future application to real practice.