For fitness professionals, few things are more frustrating than watching a client ignore your guidance. Suddenly, you may start to question yourself – maybe I’m just not good enough. Or you flip the script and blame the client – they’re lazy, undisciplined, not committed. But here’s the catch: neither mindset helps you grow, and neither does much for the credibility of our field. The real roadblock? Traditional exercise science training often assumes that “knowing better” automatically leads to “doing better.” Spoiler: it doesn’t.
Throughout your education, you have learned: (i) how physical activity prevents and treats disease; (ii) how to assess fitness and design exercise programs; and (iii) how theories like Social Cognitive Theory or the Theory of Planned Behavior can guide psychological and behavioral strategies (1). With that knowledge, you’re trained to educate clients on why they should exercise, show them how to safely perform various types of exercise, and then support their behavior with SMART goals and feedback. On paper, it makes sense: with the right information and tools, people should make the logical choice to be active. But here’s the twist, people often depart from behaving logically and rationally. Not because they’re okay making “unhealthy” choices, but because our brains are wired to ‘think fast’ and not always carefully.
The field of Behavioral Economics shows us that individuals aren’t entirely rational-decision makers. Meaning that, people don’t always weigh the pros and cons before acting – like regularly exercising today because it will pay off in better health years from now. Instead, Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon conceptualized how people often operate with ‘bounded rationality’ (2): we simply do not have the time or brain power to fully analyze every decision. Instead, we go with options that feel “good enough” in the moment. Fitness professionals should then consider how people operate under a ‘dual-process’ model of decision-making (3). Sometimes choices are indeed made based on more deliberate cognitive efforts to evaluate available and relevant information before acting (slower Type 2 processing). Other times, and more often than not, we rely on heuristicswhich are mental shortcuts that are built from prior experience and ‘gut feelings’ (faster Type 1 processing). People often default to Type 1 processing because it saves energy and avoids stress, even if the outcome isn’t ideal in the long run. Recognizing why quick thinking occurs and how it impacts exercise decisions can help fitness professionals avoid self-doubt and frustration toward your clients. Three particular concepts are of importance here: present bias, affect heuristic, and decision fatigue.
Present Bias” Why “Later” Loses to “Now”
Humans often act with a present biasdefaulting to immediately-rewarding behaviors over those with benefits that take time to manifest. This happens because future effects, even if valued, are seen as more risky because they are less certain to occur (4). Regarding exercise, desired health and fitness outcomes can take months to years to achieve and, unfortunately, outcomes are not consistently observed across people. Standardized training results in improvements for some, while others experience no change or end up worse off compared to baseline (5, 6). Historically, fitness professionals have been quick to also advertise immediate payoffs, such that exercise “is fun” and “will make you feel better”. Such sweeping statements, at best, are overreaching, and, at worst, demoralizing for individuals who do not share such positive experiences.
The Affect Heuristic: Feelings Rule Decisions
Since the early 2000’s, researchers have challenged the notion that exercise feels good as a general rule, and instead recognize that physical exertion (especially at higher intensities) can often feel unpleasant (7). The affect heuristic describes how people make decisions based on automatic emotional reactions rather than logic, particularly when operating under a perceived lack of time (8). Thus, if exercise-related stimuli stir up negative emotions, a person is unlikely to choose physical activity (9) when they may already feel overwhelmed with other, everyday priorities. Certainly, the exercise professional can guide this person to slow down, remember their goals, and lean on self-regulation tools to exercise anyway (Type 2 processing). However, our ability to exert self-control is not infinite.
Decision Fatigue: When Willpower Runs Out
Decision fatigue describes how humans’ decision-making quality worsens over time. Deliberating on options and making rational choices requires cognitive effort. Your adult clients likely exert such efforts every day to excel at their jobs, maintain their homes, manage their finances, and care for their dependents. Routine decision-making, along with stress, lack of sleep, or emotional dysregulation depletes our physical and mental resources (10). When resources are insufficient, people are much more likely to default to Type 1 processing (11) to minimize burden and get by with ‘good enough’ results in the moment. Thankfully, resources can be replenished through rest, recovery, and positive affect (10).
By acknowledging that present bias, the affect heuristic, and decision fatigue influence everyday choices, fitness professionals can take some pressure off themselves – and show some compassion to their clients – when exercise behavior falls short of expectations. Exercise engagement is messy, and that’s okay. This complexity raises important questions for both practitioners and researchers. How can we define exercise-related success so that more distant effects become less uncertain? How can workouts be both challenging enough to deliver results and pleasant enough to keep people coming back? And how can programming be made adaptable to these dynamic shifts in motivation, energy, and resources that occur day to day? By understanding that decision-making is not always rational, we can more effectively work towards creative and collaborative solutions for physical activity promotion.
Watch an interview with Dr. Strohacker
Kelly Strohacker, PhDis an associate professor in the department of kinesiology, recreation and sport studies at the University of Tennessee.
