Grant: Undergraduate: Mobility, musculoskeletal health and arthritis - ICS

Exercise promotes skeletal muscle adaptations that improve health and reduce risk for chronic disease. Traditional exercise strategies focus on continuous exercise, such as walking or cycling for 30-60 minutes. Although continuous exercise is beneficial, adherence to such programs is dismal, with over half of Canadian adults failing to meet physical activity guidelines. Lack of time is the most commonly cited exercise barrier. Low-volume high-intensity interval training (HIT), which involves brief bursts of vigorous exercise separated by periods of rest, has been touted as a time-efficient alternative to continuous exercise. Accumulating evidence indicates that HIT leads to similar beneficial skeletal muscle adaptations as continuous exercise despite a substantially lower time commitment. While the time-saving advantage makes HIT appealing for improving health, vigorous intensity exercise has been shown to be less enjoyable than moderate intensity exercise. Lower enjoyment during exercise is suggested to reduce long-term adherence. However, previous studies examining the relationship between exercise intensity and enjoyment have only compared continuous vigorous intensity exercise to moderate intensity continuous exercise. The rest periods built into HIT may make vigorous exercise more enjoyable and less fatiguing than continuous exercise, but this has yet to be studied. The purpose of this study is to compare feeling states experienced during HIT with moderate and vigorous intensity continuous exercise in sedentary adults. Participants will engage in a single session of HIT, moderate, and vigorous intensity exercise. Enjoyment, fatigue, psychological distress, and perceived effort will be monitored in each bout. Since acute feeling states during exercise are thought to predict long-term adherence, findings will help ascertain whether HIT is an appealing alternative to enhance musculoskeletal health as compared to traditional continuous exercise.